Gotta love these.
Today ends week 4 of 10 for my Suffolk County Internship (II). Today will be known as the trial by fire.
At 11:30, I was asked to make an ethernet cable long enough to get from a jack at the corner of the media room to the center where there will be a computer and projector. The presenters had one cable for their computer, but not another one for the projector. So, my boss asked me to make a cable. I’ve seen it been done before, but I’ve never done it myself. So, while my co-workers went to lunch, myself and 2 other interns stayed in to do our respective tasks. One was helping me, since I was unsure of what to do (and she had done the procedure before), and the other was working on a wireless projector setup.
Making an ethernet cable isn’t as hard as it initially sounds, but the procedure is still kinda silly: cut off the ends, arrange the wires inside in a certain order, place them inside an ethernet connector and crimp the connector to the cable locking in the arranged wires, and repeat on the other end. Long story short, I had to repeat this procedure since it wasn’t working: My co-workers came back at 10 to 1, and saw that I was still working on the cable. I thought I had done it correctly the second time (since the test on the cable seemed to work), but when brought down to the presentation room, the cable did not work, and now I had to sit on the sidelines as my supervisor did the procedure, while I assisted a delivery man sort another shippment of new Dell computers, monitors and speakers.
When I returned from that, the cable was all set to go, and I handed the cable to the man sitting at the laptop, but I was told they no longer needed the cable. I handed it back to my supervisor and quickly left the room.
I found out later that I used a cable from another place substituting for the very long cable I had to make. That cable was sufficient for their use, but they didn’t tell me (aka I forgot to ask them if they wanted a bigger cable before assuming they wanted a bigger cable. Of course, they probably wanted the bigger cable in the first place, but just made due with the short cable while I freaked out about getting them longer cable.)
In the end, I was called a hero for getting the cable that was too short by my standards, but good enough for anyone else. Yet, I felt like shit because it shouldn’t have come to that. Had I done what I was supposed to do correctly the first time, they wouldn’t have been in the position to settle for short cable.
Everyone tells me I did fine. No, I didn’t. I feel bad because I didn’t do what needed to be done. The only difference was that we got by without needed the full cable. I failed, but no one in the meeting save mt supervisor and my co-workers knew it.
Failure is not a good feeling.