Meredith McDuffie
CAS’19 | English
Data Clerk
CCD: Tell us about your work experience. What were your responsibilities?
MM: In the summer of 2017 I worked as a data clerk for an engine company called Cummins in the legal department. My daily responsibilities included digitizing archived patents and organizing legal documents.
CCD: How did you get the position? What resources at BU or elsewhere did you use?
MM: I used the resume review service to spruce up my resume which I had not really edited since creating it in high school. My resume was chosen out of a pool of applicants, and I was asked to do an interview before being offered the position.
CCD: What is one challenge that you encountered during your summer experience and how did you manage it?
MM: Sometimes I would come across a document I didn’t understand or couldn’t read because I was not familiar with the technical language. When the director of the internship program was not available for questions, I would either find resources online or ask another experienced person in the office.
CCD: What was the best thing about the experience? What was the worst?
MM: The best part of the experience was being able to get familiar with the workings of a legal department and technical documents in a hands-on experience. The worst part was that sometimes I had to work with documents in different languages and still had to figure out how to gather the necessary information from it.
CCD: What was the most memorable moment of your experience?
MM: The neighborhood that the office was located in put together a block party that everyone in the office was invited to. It was essentially a paid day off for us to mingle with the local community and the rest of the office.
CCD: What advice would you give to another student about making the most of an internship or job experience?
MM: Talk to the people who have been in the industry a long time and ask them what their path looked like. Try to get to know the heads of different departments, even the ones you aren’t interested in, to gain a broader understanding of how your department functions as part of a whole.
BU + Beyond 