Finding my voice and engineering integrity as an intern

When I first walked into SMT Technologies, I had to confess that I was speechless. As an Electrical Engineering student, I always go to the university lab which is a quiet environment where you have all the time in the world to figure out what is going on with the circuit that isn't working right. Well, as I quickly discovered, when it comes to a high-speed production environment, everything is different. Very soon I realized that Quality Assurance (QA) is not only a department but a philosophy. It means nothing more than ensuring small things to avoid failure in the final result.
My biggest problem was not about dealing with machines, but the fact that I was the only one intern there. At first, there was no one approaching me when I needed help since the staff are experienced and have a lot of work to do on time. As it turns out, communication wasn't my strength. Being quiet by nature, when I figured that all these people were extremely busy, it made me realize that I couldn't really approach them. However, I knew that if l wait while doing nothing and hoping that someone would take notice of me and teach me something, I will stay where I'm and learn nothing. That's when I began politely asking the technicians and engineers for some tasks or asking such simple questions as, "Why did you adjust that?" I initially felt intimidated by the technical gap, but asking those questions proved to be a turning point. It taught me that effective communication and gathering requirements are just as essential to the project's success as the actual engineering work.