Internships in Singapore

As I was packing my room today, I chanced upon some photos taken while I was doing my singapore internship during my NUS days, in my third year.  I was from NUS Faculty of Building and Real Estate back then and first year, all my course mates studied common subjects.  Only when it came to second year, we were asked to make a decision to take up modules in Building subjects and graduate with a degree in Building or take up modules in Real Estate subjects and graduate with a degree in Real Estate.  I wasn’t sure and didn’t know what to do.  Building subjects sounded easy as I was a Science student back in National Junior College, so naturally I chose to take up modules in Building subjects.

Doing internships in Singapore gave us a taste of how actual working life would be like when we graduated from NUS.   All of us were assigned two internships throughout our NUS course in Faculty of Building.

The internship which left the deepest impression on me was the one with a subcontractor, TeamCon Pte Ltd.  I was assigned to be at a construction site with interns from the polytechnics during a few weeks of my internship.  We were assigned to do site inspection and other related work.  The people and rest of the interns were very nice to me and I didn’t really need to do site inspection, as the company left the more ‘dangerous’ work to the guys.  I did remembered doing site inspection two times wearing the yellow safety boots and white helmet.  It was indeed an experience as I had to be very vigilant to look at for beams, poles, nails on the ground and any other hazardous situations.

The boss was very sweet to present to all the interns a book called “The One Minute Manager” and also an unsigned cheque to spur us to achieve greater heights.

It was great that most universities have Internship Singapore Programme in place as It was indeed a humbling experience for me as a student to have a chance to see how it was like working in the construction industry.  It was also an opportunity for me to assess if working in the construction industry was the way to go for me.