Uncertainty
I was asked to start the internship quite early in order to assist my supervisor with some work preparation. The phrase of the beginning kind of stresses me out as I had to make sure my work did help. Also, a lot of works were passed down by the previous interns bit by bit. Sharing the document via Google Drive, I got to be familar myself with the terms, layout and working style which vary among one another. As a beginner, I needed to make changes carefully and kept track on them, just in case of making mistake. After a week or two, I started to know how it usually runs and makes me somehow relieves.
Obstacles
Communication
My supervisor is a great man of serveral roles and multitasking. Due to the busy working schedule and sometimes being overseas, the communication between he and I relied totally on emails. And it sometimes took a few days for the communication to work. I was usually on the basis of receiving work, making clarification, asking for more information and reporting the progress of my work.
We have a mutual belief: request of clarification is better than making mistakes.
Knowing the time it took with emails and the belief we held, I had to write the email clearly and read the emails carefully as they were mostly self-explanatory. It was hard for me to get things started quickly. But then things would go smooth.
Making sense...
Working at home (in my case) has one drawback. There is no one to discuss with. When it comes to things uncertain, what I usually do is to eliminate the approaches which would not make sense with the whole picture.
An example would be the updates on Twitter feeds. The record made by the previous intern far outnumbered that of half-way of my internship. I started to wonder if the daily Twitter updates had to be more frequent so that the number in the record maed more sense and comparable.