I recently wrote that students looking for internships should look for evidence of growth.
It’s easy for a company to say that it gives interns meaningful work, mentorship, and opportunities to grow. But the real proof of a good internship is whether former interns can show you what that growth actually looked like.
What did they work on? What were they trusted to do? How did their responsibility change? What can they handle now that they couldn’t have handled when they started?
Kylie Parent is a good example.
She’s interned with PJ Wallbank Springs across four summers and during the school year. This spring, she’ll graduate from Western Michigan University and join us full time as an engineer.
When Kylie started, she had very little exposure to manufacturing. At the time, she was simply learning what engineering work looks like. By her fourth summer, she had grown into someone who can own a difficult problem and lead conversations around it, define what’s happening, come up with a hypotheses, test it, and ultimately connect findings and share her own recommendation to move us closer to a better solution.
But rather than taking my word for it, I asked Kylie to tell her story in her own words…
Kylie’s Story as an Engineer Intern
When I started my first semester at Western Michigan University, I was still figuring out what type of engineering I wanted to pursue. I took a few introductory classes and decided on mechanical engineering, but I had very little exposure to manufacturing.
My dad worked as a chemical engineer in manufacturing, so I heard a little bit about that work through him. But I didn’t really know what I wanted to do with a mechanical engineering degree. I was looking for an internship that would help me figure that out.
I initially looked at PJ Wallbank Springs because it was close to home, and I had heard positive things from former interns and co-ops I knew from high school. I also liked that previous experience wasn’t required. Being a freshman in college, I didn’t have a manufacturing background, but the job posting made it clear that willingness to learn and be coached was more important.
A smaller company also felt like the right place to start because I thought I’d have more opportunity to see different parts of the business and learn what engineering actually supports.
That ended up being true. During my first two summers, I mostly supported larger projects led by other engineers. I was learning the process, what different operations do, and how changes in one area affect another. I spent time on the floor, asked questions, and started to understand the problems that operators and engineers were working through every day.
Each time I came back onsite in the summer, it felt like I could get up to speed faster and take on more responsibility. This past summer, I was given a process improvement project that several people had already tried to work on and solve. The goal was to improve efficiency in one area of the process. Instead of being given one defined task within someone else’s project, I was trusted to investigate the problem and recommend how we should approach it.
I started by identifying the pain points experienced by our operators on the production floor and looking at how we could make the springs coming off the coiler more consistent. My first approach didn’t produce the result we needed.
But that was a good learning experience. It forced me to step back and ask whether we were looking at the problem the right way. That led me to question the gauging method we were using and start working on a different approach.
I worked independently on the initial investigation, led discussions with other team members, developed gauging ideas, and ran trials. When I needed, I involved engineering and quality as thought partners.
The first attempt at the new gauging method had issues too. There were communication gaps, differences in process understanding, and questions about how the change would work in production. But we took notes, adjusted the design, and used what we learned to make the next trial better.
When I think back, that’s probably the project that best shows how I’ve grown, especially with building confidence and developing communication and problem-solving skills.
During my first summer, I wouldn’t have been ready to handle those discussions or make those decisions with confidence. I was still trying learning how the process worked. This summer, I could take and apply input from different team members to help move the work forward.
One piece of feedback that changed how I approached my work came during a one-on-one conversation. I was asking a lot of questions and contributing, but I was hesitant to own my ideas because I was an intern. I didn’t want to overstep.
But in that one-on-one conversation, I was encouraged to have confidence in my thinking and push projects forward instead of waiting for the team to do it for me. That didn’t mean I was expected to figure everything out alone. It meant I needed to develop an initial point of view, bring it to the team, and use their feedback to make it better.
I carried that advice into my final summer. Having that ownership and independence, while knowing I had people I could go to when I needed help, made a big difference in my development.
I’ve also grown a lot in how I communicate and solve problems with people across the business. I spent a lot of time talking with operators to understand the issues they were experiencing and how potential changes would affect their process. I learned that you can’t just come up with a technically sound idea. You have to understand how it will work once it’s actually implemented and how important it is to explain why the change is happening and how it can help.
Working with different teams also gave me more ways to think through problems. I learned tools like 5 Why and fishbone analysis, but more importantly, I learned how to communicate my thinking so other people could challenge it and help improve it.
Compared with some of my classmates’ internships, my work touched more functions and gave me a broader view of how engineering decisions affect the business.
After my third summer internship, I started thinking more seriously about where I wanted to begin my career. I wanted to return to PJ Wallbank Springs because I could keep building on what I had learned. Each year, I was trusted with more responsibility as my capability grew. That progress gave me confidence that I could continue developing here after graduation, and likely at a faster pace than my peers. I’ll also have the chance to build on the relationships I’ve already built as I transition to a full-time engineer.
My Advice to You
My advice to students looking for internships is to apply, even if you don’t meet every qualification. I had very little manufacturing experience when I applied, but I was hungry to learn, humble in my approach, and smart in the way I worked with people and tried to figure things out.
I’d also encourage students to look beyond company names you already recognize. Instead, ask former interns what they worked on, how their responsibility changed, what kind of coaching or feedback they received, and whether they were trusted with meaningful work.
Those answers will give you a better sense of what you’ll learn during your internship and how you’ll grow.
For more, read Finding an Internship That Helps You Grow to learn how to evaluate internship opportunities.
And apply for the 2027 PJWS Summer Engineering Intern Academy.
By: Kylie Parent, Engineering Intern & Brandon Bartneck, VP of Engineering & Intern Academy Leader