A few years ago, I landed my first gig as an intern developer at a company I’ll just call The Place™. You know the type — fluorescent lights, coffee that tasted suspiciously like despair, and a lot of “legacy” code that everyone was afraid to touch.
I had no clue what I was doing.
Seriously. My first task was fixing a “simple styling issue.” It took me an entire day. I triple-checked the margins, googled every class name, and nearly cried when I realized I had been editing the wrong CSS file the whole time.
Classic intern moment.
But here's the funny thing: even with all the imposter syndrome, even with the awkward stand-ups where I barely spoke, I loved it.
Something clicked. Every bug I fixed felt like a small victory. Every weird problem I solved made me feel more confident. And despite the chaos, the senior devs (shoutout to the one who actually explained Git to me like a human being) made me feel like I belonged.
That internship didn’t just give me experience — it gave me direction.
It made me want to get better. It made me want to stay in this field and see how far I could go.
So if you're just starting out and everything feels like a mess? That’s okay.
Sometimes, the mess is where the magic starts.
Looking back, I wouldn’t change a thing. Except maybe the coffee.