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RAA

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4.2
  • 1,000 - 50,000 employees

Alva Walshe

Alva studied Law and Commerce (Marketing) at The University of Adelaide and is the Risk & Compliance Summer Intern at RAA

7 AM

I wake up, well-rested considering what a busy weekend I had! I usually (if I’m organised!) lay my clothes out and pack my lunch the night before, so all I’ve got to do is get ready. I have a cup of tea and manage to squeeze in breakfast before I leave at 7:45.

8 AM

I arrive at the office – I’ve found 8 AM is the sweet spot for being able to find a park! Luckily, my team is very flexible with what hours you work. I start the day by checking my calendar to see what I’ve got on today, as well as checking and responding to emails. I’ve been sent a new task by my supervisor, so I start to look at the deliverables and sketch out how I’m going to best approach it. There are a few things that I’m unfamiliar with, so I schedule some time to go through the task with him.

9 AM

We have our weekly team catch-up, which is usually a mix of both stories about everyone’s weekend and the work week ahead. After that finishes, I head back to my desk and start working on some of my assigned projects. I’ve mostly been tasked with pulling legal obligations relevant to RAA from legislation and simplifying the language so that it can be used and interpreted easily by employees across the business.

10 AM

After working hard for the past hour or so, I decide it’s time to get a coffee to keep myself going. The Legal intern and I head down to the RAA café together and chat about any problems or obstacles we may have run into, and whether we’re able to help each other in any way. It’s been great having another intern in a similar area because we’ve been able to put our heads together on certain tasks.

11 AM

I’ve been invited to sit in on a meeting that involves scenario planning with other business units. I take notes and jot down any questions that I want to ask later. After the meeting, I grab my lunch to heat it up before the intern lunch and learn session.

12 PM

Along with the other interns, we locate the meeting room and head in. Today, we’re learning about Myer-Briggs personality types. These sessions have been a great help for the Intern Group Project, which we had all been feeling nervous about. I’m surprised by some of my fellow interns’ results, but we leave with a much greater understanding of each other and how to work together most effectively.

Day in the life Alva - RAA

1 PM

Once I’m back at my desk, I have a few tasks I need to complete for the Intern Group Project before our meeting that afternoon. We’re working on developing a sustainability strategy for RAA, which we will present upon the completion of our internship. Working in a big team with interns from a range of different backgrounds has presented its challenges, but through our lunch and learn sessions, as well as spending time getting to know each other on a more personal level, we’ve been able to identify and use our individual skills.

2 PM

The Legal intern and I work on setting an agenda for our intern meeting at 2:30 PM. This is something I wouldn’t have necessarily thought of doing prior to starting this internship. My RAA mentor suggested an agenda would help us make more progress during our meetings and it’s been a huge help.

We head to the meeting room to join the other interns. We don’t always get straight to work – sometimes it’s nice to catch up on what we’ve been working on and what we did over the weekend! Eventually, we try to get on track and start attempting to narrow down some of the ideas we have for the sustainability strategy.

3 PM

We start by writing down all our ideas on post-it notes, then try to group them together based on similarities. It’s proving difficult to narrow them down – everyone has a lot of great ideas! We have limited time to present and know that we can’t possibly include everything we’ve thought of, so we try and look at everything with a very critical eye. By the end of the meeting, we haven’t made a lot of progress, which is frustrating. We decide we need to schedule some more time this week to work on the project.

Day in the life Alva - RAA

4 PM

I get back to my desk and jot down any new tasks I need to complete for the Intern Project. I check my calendar for tomorrow to see what I’ve got on and make sure I’m prepared for any meetings. It’s a busy week! I have RAA’s Wellbeing and Resilience Training for the next couple of days, meaning I have limited time to get work done. I keep working on my task from this morning and respond to a few emails before I start packing up my desk to leave at 4:30 PM.