Mechanical Maintenance Intern, Jessi Velino, has been gaining hands-on work experience throughout the plant by replacing equipment, completing preventative maintenance tasks, and learning how machines operate.
Each morning, Jessi begins her day by reviewing the daily work order and finding out who she’ll be partnered with. From there, its hands-on problem solving, fixing broken components, replacing equipment, and filling out paperwork. Every day brings something new. One day she could be replacing worn out parts, and another she may be responding to a pipe burst and figuring out how to contain the water leak.
Jessi has found this internship experience exciting and unpredictable. While she learned the theory of systems like heat transfer in school, seeing the machinery firsthand, disassembling it, understanding how it’s made, and putting it back together has been her favorite part of the internship. She particularly values the lessons from experienced maintenance workers: their commentary on what design features work, which ones don’t, and what can make a piece of equipment a challenge to maintain.
She’s also learning the importance of asking questions, both about the tasks she’s working on and the broader systems around her. “I’ve learned not to be timid,” she says. “I ask what I could be doing better, and I ask questions beyond just the task I was assigned.”
With a long-term goal in engineering design, Jessi sees this internship as a critical stepping stone, giving her the practical, real-world insight into how machines are built, repaired, and maintained. It’s a perspective that will ultimately shape how she designs machinery in the future.