Today, I was called into a meeting along with another intern, to speak with two of our managers. The past two weeks, I have been helping to organize contestants for a modeling contest for women over 40. However, due to the overload of submissions, on top of my other tasks here at work (which have been expanding rapidly ever since one of the assistants got promoted, leaving us with less staff for the same amount of work), I hadn’t been able to finish updating the list of contestants before Friday afternoon.

Little did I know that a head manager looked at the list and was not amused (oops!) at how it looked. Even though the official deadline for finishing the list was Monday afternoon, and even though I knew what I was doing with organizing the list, I ended up looking unprepared and disorganized.

My managers were concerned that the other intern and I could not handle the daunting task of organizing the contest, due to a misunderstanding and lack of communication. Because the other intern and I were both absent on Friday afternoon, the situation quickly escalated with no one to explain the list.

So, what did I learn after my first mistake?

1. Communicate thoroughly with your managers or bosses about the status of your work.
2. Ask for more time to work on one project when you need it (rather than being overloaded by multiple tasks).
3. Continue to work hard, to not only promote the image of being a good worker, but also to be a good worker.
4. Hope that hard work pays off, and that your managers know they can depend on you and trust your work, especially in stressful, tight situations.

This is the first time something like this has happened during my internship, and I hope it will be the last. Do you have any experiences making mistakes at work? How did you deal with it?