This blog series offers a glimpse of reSET’s summer internship program in entrepreneurship and social enterprise. The series will aim to capture interns’ experiences, both with reSET’s curriculum and the startups that they are working alongside. Our fifth blogger, Thomas Ropes, is a recent UConn graduate.

While I was a student at UConn, I didn’t think that I wanted to work for a social enterprise or to be involved with entrepreneurship at all for that matter. As an Economics major, I thought I needed to get a well-paying job at an insurance company as soon as I graduated. It wasn’t until I stumbled upon reSET at the on-campus Careers for the Common Good Fair that I thought I might be able to do something different with my postgraduate life.

I’m currently working with two different small businesses. The first, KeepSight, is a nonprofit dedicated to helping people identify the early signs of different eye diseases, such as macular degeneration. The second is Breakfast, Lunch & Dinner, a for-profit business that is focused on social cohesion and that works to build it here in Hartford via projects, events and other ideas bringing communities together.

Aside from these two projects, reSET has provided my intern cohort with professional development once a week. For the first half of the summer, we learned the ins and outs of businesses–from what a “customer archetype” is to how a “positioning statement” is different than a “mission statement.” During these final weeks, much of our time will go to reSET’s Innovation Challenge.

The reSET Innovation Challenge seeks to simulate the process of starting a social enterprise and to provide an idea of the amount of work involved with launching a new business. Three groups of interns are collaborating to conceive business ideas that have social missions behind them. All nine of us will then pitch our ideas to a panel of judges at the end of the internship..

Before I knew about reSET’s existence, the most thought I had put into entrepreneurship was watching the popular TV show, “Shark Tank. “ Now I realize the true benefits of entrepreneurship and how it can help me in the future. Even if I don’t decide to continue living the life of an entrepreneur after this internship, I know that the skills I’ve learned here are extremely valuable and marketable. However, a part of me would like to continue being involved with reSET and social entrepreneurship as , I’m convinced there’s never a dull moment in startup life.