Here at DISTek, we place a strong emphasis on our internship program. Every summer we hire a handful of interns to work alongside our teams to not only provide mentor-ship for those entering the field, but also to, hopefully, entice some of the best and brightest to join our ranks after graduation. This summer we were lucky enough to have David Schmadeke, an Electrical Engineering major at Iowa State University, join our internship program. He is scheduled to graduate in May of 2018. Before heading back to class, he left us with some final thoughts:
“Ever since I took my first embedded class, I was hooked on the idea of working with modeled and embedded systems. I first heard of DISTek at the Iowa State Career Fair. I went over to DISTek’s booth and after having a conversation with one of the engineering managers, I knew that I wanted to learn more. I applied for an internship and the following summer I started at DISTek.
“On my first day I was introduced to my DISTek team, The The Pied pIPEers, as well as being introduced to just about everyone else in the office; everyone was very friendly and welcoming and I immediately had a good feeling about this internship. Within hours I was learning about a new program and within days I was starting to contribute to a project. I knew that I wanted to model systems and as soon as I started my first project that idea was fortified. However, I quickly learned that my experiences in college would not completely prepare me for the “real world” projects and tasks that an engineer would face. There is a lot more than just programming when it comes to an actual project. There is also a lot of planning, communication, teamwork and time that needs to be put into a project. Luckily everyone at DISTek, especially my team members, were very accommodating and willing to help.
“The skills and experience that I have gained in a few months at DISTek are something that I could never find in a classroom. I am very thankful that I was given the opportunity to learn alongside other engineers who have years of experience in my field of interest.”
All of us here at DISTek wish David the best of luck in his senior year at Iowa State University and thank him for spending his summer with us.
