Noah Hodge – IT Internship

Hello! I’m Noah Hodge, and I am interested in the field of Computer Science, more specifically the tech support side of IT. To help gain some experience in this field, I was offered the opportunity to work as an intern at Main Street IT Solutions in the helpdesk department. Tech support is mostly digital now, so most issues are resolved remotely from the office. Under these circumstances, I’m able to observe several solutions in a short span of time. One downside to this is a smaller amount of hands-on experience. Main Street is a BPO, which means companies pay them to be their IT department. As a result, I get to observe computer issues from all sorts of companies, with clients of all sorts of attitudes towards technology.

On Tuesdays and Fridays, I drive over and arrive sometime between 1:30 and 1:45. I make my way back to the office and sit down in my cubicle. After that, the activities that I participate in are varied. When someone isn’t on call or documenting the issue they fixed, I wander over and watch what they’re doing, and ask questions about it. The issues addressed here vary greatly and can range from someone with a question about how to use a computer to installing hardware like cameras, resolving account issues for clients, setting up new company computers, and sometimes even trying to save files from a bricked computer.

Most of what I do is referred to as ‘loading’ a computer. To do this, I put an account on the computer so that Main Street can manage it and install all the programs that the client needs. It’s simple and there are step-by-step instructions, but it can take a while. So far, I’ve only had 2 projects: loading a set of 4 computers and installing Windows on a computer from scratch. The rest of the internship is primarily observation. One of the big things I’ve learned is that documentation is everything. Documenting solutions, passwords, what’s been tried, and tons of variables that can contribute to a problem. All of this work prevents hours of troubleshooting for an issue someone else resolved a month or two ago, and some embarrassing calls saying “we, the IT department for your business, can’t access your account to solve the problem.” Another important thing is scheduling. Making sure that everyone gets attention and that their issues are resolved in a timely manner is crucial to keeping a client satisfied.

Overall, I’ve learned a lot from this internship and am enjoying the experience this is giving me. I work with some amazing people, and I’m so glad that they’re so open to questions I have about IT. I haven’t really done enough yet to figure out if this is exactly where I want to go, but it’s certainly reinforced my decision to pursue IT and Information Sciences.