Intern Voice: Think outside your work responsibilities by Yen Ho

Think outside your work responsibilities

Hey! My name is Yen and I’m a co-op student at the University of Waterloo currently interning on the Enterprise Marketing team at Microsoft. One of many reasons why I enjoy coming into work every morning is because we have a vibrant and connected co-op community – we all try to support one another in our work and volunteer initiatives, which I think fosters a fun and healthy work environment. I hope to provide some advice and pass on lessons I have learned (observations, mistakes, and all!) throughout my co-op term because as the High School Musical cast would put it “We’re all in this together” .

Advice #1 – Try something new and conquer fears

I am one of those students that enjoy doing presentations but oddly enough, public speaking is one of my fears along with probably every other student. Although I took a public speaking course at Waterloo that sparked an interest in completing a minor in Speech Communication, I still get nervous before presentations.

Luckily enough on my first day, my predecessor encouraged me to join a club she was involved with - Toastmasters at Microsoft - to improve my public speaking and leadership skills and meet other employees across the organization. Needless to say, I debated for a couple of weeks before joining and it’s now a meeting I look forward too! These meetings modeled my public speaking course where the audience provides the presenter with constructive feedback in a tactful manner but this club and its members create an exceptionally supportive environment that makes you want to come back every two weeks. So far, I’ve only presented table topics where I have to present an impromptu speech on a topic chosen by the Table Topics Master (all of which revolved around the Kardashians… but that’s another story), which allowed me to build my confidence in front of my work colleagues. Through listening to other presentations and the feedback provided by the evaluators, you learn at what your audience picks up on while you’re presenting and learn how it’s important to think before you speak.

My advice is to get yourself out there and learn something new (or refine a skill or two) because you never know what you’ll learn, what new interests you’ll pick up, and who you’ll meet. At first mention, it didn’t seem like a club I would want to join but as with every co-op term, I try to step outside of my comfort zone and do something new. Public speaking isn’t a skill used for presentations in the classroom or for work meetings, but it’s a critical soft skill that is important for us to communicate effectively with different audiences. Toastmasters has introduced me to employees who I don’t interact with on a daily basis and it has allowed me to interact with those who I do see regularly in a different context. I’m looking forward to setting a goal of completing 3 major speeches this year with Toastmasters – and I guess I have to go through with this now as it’s online ;)

- Yen Ho