Internship Journey:

In the second half of 2015, most of my classmates in the third year had already left school for internships, and my dormitory was no exception, with only me and another roommate passing the time. By chance, a mechanical factory came to our university for recruitment. After I visited, I was satisfied with the requirements, and although it was a small auto parts factory located in Xintang, Zengcheng, it was still an internship, and having a job, salary, and a place to stay was enough. Two days later, I ended my idle life of eating and sleeping, packed my luggage, and my family drove me to the factory. Anyone who has worked in a factory knows that factories are usually located in the suburbs, essentially in places where "birds don't poop." My internship factory was no exception; there were two or three small villages and towns within a kilometer or two, where there were some shops to buy daily necessities and snacks. This factory was a mechanical factory that produced parts for other auto factories. Besides the office and dormitory being in the same building, there were also two workshops: a stamping workshop and a post-processing packaging workshop. The workshop foreman assigned me to operate small machines in the stamping workshop. When I actually took over the work, I realized that the working environment here was indeed dirty, poor, and noisy, but I had anticipated such a work environment since I chose this major for my internship. Therefore, on my family's recommendation, I bought noise-canceling earplugs on a certain treasure website. My main job was to install molds into the automatic stamping machine, operate the machine to stamp the specified materials into corresponding parts, and use measuring tools to check whether the parts were qualified.

This factory operates on a two-shift system (for production workers), which means there is a morning shift and an evening shift. The morning shift is from eight to twelve, with a one-hour lunch break, and the afternoon shift is from one to five-thirty, followed by dinner at six. The evening shift is from seven to eleven-thirty, with a half-hour late-night snack, and then another hour before getting off work. The workers in the workshop all say that the evening shift is easier, as the morning shift is longer and there are supervisors present, since the supervisors in their office do not work at night.