I’m an undergrad working a paid internship over the summer at a state agency. I was hired to rewrite the UNIX Systems Administrator’s operations manual. Most of the info is available. I am editing and reformatting the existing documents. However, I have no UNIX experience or coursework. My major is CIS; I have other skills like Java, JSP and Systems Analysis & Design. I understood I would be able to do OS installs, and other administrator duties to help me understand and document them for the manual.
So the SysAdmin who is in charge of my internship let me install Solaris 9 on a server. The second CD never would read, and he left work early to renew his truck resgistration and told me to call if there were any problems. I called twice over a three hour period, since I was under the impression that if this were not running it may cause other problems in the system. So I left two messages, he never returned my calls. The next morning he was not in. I could not go any further and the other team members were taking a ‘hands-off’ kind of stance with me, so I did not push the issue. I was able to document the install up to that point, and not any further. He wrote me an email telling me he was swamped because the budget year end is comimg up, and basically said he did not have any time for me, just to work on the rewrites, and there probably won’t be anything else to do hands-on.
I don’t want to rock the boat. If I lay low, I will pretty much be hired straight out of college to work for this agency. But I do wonder is this a group I want to work with? There are many interns in the building, I see them interacting with their sponsors, being taken over to the fitness center, which I was not even told about. Geez, it’s really hard not to take this personally, and it’s affecting my attitude.
I thought a proactive thing to do would be to ask my sponsor if he can meet once a week for about 10 or 15 minutes and I would come over to his cube. He has not answered my email. Of course going to his cube he does not have time then either. It’s so convenient that this happened when his boss was out of the office. She’s quite personable. I’d like to stay on good terms with her, so I hesistate going to her with this.
I really don’t understand the shell scripting I am typing up, and parts of the document appear to not be at all consistent, which leads me to believe there may be some bad code in it. I do have a UNIX account but not root access, so I can practice basic commands. I tried to run a simple Perl script and it would not execute for me.
I really want a plan, knowing what will happen over the summer will help me feel a little more secure. If rewtyping documents is all there is, why am I in an internship when a temp admin would have been cheaper? Those promises of working on systems, doing installs and such were just hot air.
So what would be the best thing, flying under the radar and being an underacheiver or risk burning a bridge to push for more interaction and learning?