Elna – from an internship to a summer job
Elna has been doing her internship in Valukumpu’s surface treatment department. However, the internship period is nearing its end, so we checked in to hear how the young lab technician is doing.
Elna started her vocational school internship in February. Over the past few months, her work environment in the surface treatment laboratory at Valukumpu has become very familiar to her. Elna’s tasks have included collecting and analyzing various water samples. In our surface treatment department, we closely monitor both the composition of treatment baths and the concentrations in wastewater. The wastewater from surface treatment is cleaned in our own treatment facility alongside production, so monitoring the quality of purification is extremely important. In addition to laboratory tasks, Elna has also had the opportunity to familiarize herself with our assembly operations and injection moulding production.
According to Elna, the internship has met her expectations. This was the first internship of her degree program, so her expectations were understandably high. Elna says the work tasks have been meaningful and varied. She especially enjoyed the balance between computer-based and practical tasks. Another sign of her satisfaction is that Elna mentioned she would be staying on for a summer job with the Ouneva Group.
The most memorable lesson Elna learned during the internship is that there are truly all kinds of jobs out there. She has discovered a diverse and dynamic work routine in her field. Coming straight from school, she said it took some adjustment to realize that in practice, things are often done quite differently from how they are taught in lessons. However, Elna emphasizes that in real working life, even concepts that felt difficult in school have become clearer, and the logic behind things has been surprisingly easy to understand in a positive way.