One of the greatest uncertainties I’ve dealt with in my internship has been the structure of my assignments. At school, everything is spelled out for you. On day one of the semester, you get a syllabus that tells you exactly what chapters to read, when the homework is due, and what you need to do to get an A on a paper. There is a clear right and wrong answer, and you just follow the steps.
My internship in Seoul is the exact opposite. The biggest thing I struggle with every day is just how vague the directions are. In a fast-paced startup, things change constantly, and nobody gives you a step-by-step checklist. Instead of telling me exactly how to do a task, my boss will just give me a big, broad goal, like telling me to do market research on a new trend or find ways to get more people using our platform, and then I’m left to figure out how to actually do it on my own. At first, it felt like I was totally lost. I kept sitting at my desk waiting for someone to come over and explain the “right” way to do things, but I quickly realized that nobody was going to give me a tutorial. The lack of direction wasn’t a mistake; it’s just how startups operate.
Dealing with that much uncertainty at my very first internship was honestly really stressful, but I had to change how I looked at it. I stopped looking at the lack of clear instructions as a bad thing or a sign that I was failing. Instead, I realized that if my boss didn’t give me strict rules, it meant I could pretty much choose how I wanted to handle the project.
To actually get work done without losing my mind, I started breaking down these huge, blurry goals into smaller pieces that actually made sense to me. If an assignment is super vague, I don’t just sit there staring at my laptop screen. I start by making my own simple templates in Excel or Notion to organize my thoughts, track data, or list out competitors. By forcing myself to create a basic system from scratch, I can pull myself out of the confusion. It turns a massive, confusing project into a few small, daily tasks that I actually know how to finish.
Another big thing that helped me navigate the confusion was changing how I talk to my boss and team. When you’re an intern, you feel like you have to pretend you know everything so you look smart. I used to worry that asking questions would make it seem like I couldn’t handle working abroad. But I learned there’s a big difference between asking someone to do your job for you and just checking to make sure you’re on the right track.
Instead of guessing what my boss wants, working for three days in a corner, and risking turning in something totally wrong, I started making super rough drafts or outlines of my ideas early on. Then, I’ll show it to my boss and ask whether or not I’m on the right track or what I could be doing to get there. This one habit has been a lifesaver. It saves me so much time and clears up the confusion right away, ensuring that even if the starting directions were super vague, the final product is exactly what they need.
Dealing with all this uncertainty hasn’t been easy, but it’s probably the area where I’ve grown the most this summer. It’s forcing me to stop relying on a school syllabus to tell me how to think. Navigating the ambiguity has made me way more self-reliant and confident in making my own decisions, even when I don’t have all the details. In the real business world, things change fast, and nobody is going to hold your hand. Learning how to deal with that chaos right now in Seoul is preparing me for an actual career way better than sitting in a classroom ever could.
