Four weeks ago I walked into the Rx EDGE office ready to begin the first day of my new internship, and frankly I was nervous. I was reminded about an old episode of the TV show “Scrubs” that deals with four new interns that start to work at the main hospital. Each goes on to have a different experience throughout their first day, and while all four agree that it was difficult, they came to the consensus that they were going to strengthen their medical acumen throughout their tenure.
The Power of Proofreading
While I wouldn’t ask anyone to trust me to perform surgery, I do feel like my time with Rx EDGE has greatly helped me transfer what I’ve learned in the Kelley School of Business lecture halls to the real business world. There are so many areas where I added to my “business rolodex” that I never would have thought of during an in-class presentation or accounting test. To start, although I proofread my papers, I never proofread my assignments like I did at Rx EDGE. There truly is a lot of detail that goes into crafting a perfect white paper or strategy sheet. Each word needs to be carefully selected and re-read to ensure coherency. On top of all that, the point being made must be concise. Conveying a large amount of information in a digestible manner is a challenge, but a great skill to have. I look forward to utilizing this in future writing tasks.
Find the Source
Many times, one source isn’t enough. To truly understand something as complex as a medication, tons of research is involved. I created a case study for Diabetes during my internship that required me to pull many different resources ( in scholarly articles, the manufacturer’s own website, university studies) to truly communicate what Rx EDGE did for the company. There are so many ways to get information that not utilizing all of them is doing a disservice to whatever project is being worked on. At Indiana, the professors are some of the most knowledgeable people in the world in their given fields, and I had never sought out their advice. In the future, I will be visiting them much more to get a more informed perspective on not just projects, but future goals.
Do What You Love
My time at Rx EDGE was short, but important. Perhaps most importantly, I discovered that doing something that’s enjoyable is the most important part of any job. A great example of this was some of the research I conducted for my end-of-internship presentation. During this presentation, I talked about what I learned in the pharma market. Naturally I had to look into DTC (Direct-to-Consumer) advertising, which was the legalization of manufacturers advertising their product to the public. While I only needed a quick few facts about DTC, I found myself enthralled with the subject matter. It was so interesting to me to learn how these manufacturers aligned themselves in the marketing landscape and how they leveraged their brands comparatively. Before I knew it, I had been reading about DTC for an hour, and had far more information than I would ever need. Why? Not because I had to, but because I wanted to.
Closing Thoughts
What I walked away with the most after these four weeks was an appreciation; an appreciation for a meticulous, fiery curiosity. Everyone I worked with and met seemed to love what they did, and wanted to learn more about it. It seems that whatever field I decide to go into, be that marketing, sales, or maybe not even business at all, the most important thing is to find something to be passionate about and to always be curious.