During the first few weeks of my internship, I have noticed that my supervisors are very busy, meaning that they often do not have time to give specific details on the tasks that they assign to me. The main structure of my internship has been working on a major project that I will present during the last week of my internship, with smaller short term research presentations often given with less than one day’s notice. For most of the assignments I only receive very broad directions with two or three items to focus on, with little direction on how the data should be compiled, formatted, or presented. I found that the best way to work around this uncertainty was to pay attention to the company resources I was given, take notes on the methods and formatting of other employees’ work and try to emulate that in my own work, so that it could easily be integrated into the company’s existing resources. I attempt to do a similar strategy with presentations; every Thursday, my company has an all staff meeting where many different people present the work that they have done throughout the  week. Even though the meetings are done in Korean, I use live translation to understand the structure and the results-first mindset behind the presentations. 

Another method that I have found for working through the uncertainty has been communicating with colleagues during company lunch. Everyday, the whole company gathers for an hour in the buildings cafeteria for lunch time, and because most people in the company can speak some level of English, I have used this time to ask clarifying questions about the depth of research I should go into, specific questions about clinical data, and benchmarks that I should aim to complete by the end of the week. I found that these informal conversations over food often give me more directions than reaching out for help over Microsoft Teams because it feels like much more of a personal connection. Not only do people have more time, but I feel as if people are more comfortable using English in more relaxed conversations than formally during working hours or having to read and write a message.

For example, last week I was tasked with an assignment and I was only given an incredibly brief, surface level explanation of my responsibilities. I was given exactly one day to do all the research and prepare a presentation for the next company meeting, but I had no clue where to start. There was an abundance of information published on the subject, and I had almost no idea how in depth I was supposed to explain the results or the methodologies used. I spent the whole morning making tables, charts, and graphs using the available data, but I was hesitant to continue because I did not know if I was going in the right direction. During our lunch break, I asked one of my supervisors if I was on the right path and she offered to take fifteen minutes of her time in the afternoon to review the work that I had done so far. While we were meeting she understood where some of my hesitancy and uncertainty came from, and helped direct me in building a clear structure for my presentation, along with sharing previous presentations to base mine off of.  

This specific experience reminded me of the research I had done on Korean workplace norms, where there is a focus on doing things right the first time, and getting it done as soon as possible. I believe that often thinking about this has caused me to put even more pressure on myself to avoid asking for help formally through a message. I believe that studying the work of my colleagues is the best way to deal with uncertainty, because they are used to doing work the way that the managers would like for it to be done. I also believe that asking for guidance on each step of every project I touch would defeat the whole point of the company hiring an intern, so challenging myself to come up with my own approach has allowed me to grow and be more confident when I start a new task. In the future, if there are any other circumstances where I feel like there is uncertainty with the direction I am given, I think I would like to take more responsibility in creating frameworks and project charters, helping me learn more about the process behind the outcome.