At 31, I quit my full-time job to take an unpaid internship that eventually led to my dream role.
While starting from scratch taught me plenty, my most valuable lessons didn’t come from management—they came from my fellow interns, some of whom were a decade younger than me.
Headlines often paint Gen Z as the most challenging generation to work with. Yet, that wasn't my experience at all. I found them to be fiercely practical and deeply inspirational. Working alongside them as a 31-year-old with nearly a decade of professional experience made me question whether what society criticizes as "weakness" is actually a paradigm shift toward emotional intelligence.
Here are two lessons my Gen Z co-interns taught me that made me rethink what I once considered professional wisdom versus toxic work-culture conditioning.
Ask the big questions
From day one, I noticed their willingness to ask the big questions. Interns are supposed to ask questions, of course. But while the rest of us stuck to procedural queries, the youngest in our cohort skipped the superficialities and went straight to the heart of the matter.
“Why?” they asked frequently.
They genuinely wanted to understand—and to offer their perspective. *Why are we doing it like this? Why is this the process?* If a procedure seemed convoluted, they’d ask, “Why do it this way when we could just do it that way?” If a task seemed redundant or lacked value, they’d ask, “Why bother?”
After years in professional settings, I had grown accustomed to upper management shutting down conversations that ventured beyond basic instructions. I realized I hadn't asked a genuine "why" question since my last job interview.
My Gen Z colleagues reminded me that questions are powerful signals. They convey that while we trust our team to guide us, "business as usual" isn't the only path to success. Questioning the status quo keeps the core philosophy of our work at the forefront, allowing us to operate more effectively and stay aligned with our overall mission.
Protect your time with boundaries
As the internship workload increased, I noticed my fellow interns fiercely protecting their time. They cared about their work and worked hard, but when the clock struck 5 p.m., they were gone. They took their working hours literally.
I remember when I got my first job, an older Millennial coworker told me to say goodbye to my free time. The prevailing mantra was that working on weekends was the price of a future promotion. My younger co-interns, however, were unapologetically different. When they were out, they were out. They were balancing school, personal obligations, the internship, and a social life, and they knew how to block their time accordingly.
They set boundaries. They took their lunch, clocked out on time, and communicated when they needed a brain break. They weren't lazy; they simply embodied true work-life balance.
Meanwhile, I was juggling nine different freelance roles, building a side business, and meticulously rearranging my bare-minimum sleep schedule just in case I needed to stay late.
Gen Z reminded me that constant availability is not proof of dedication. Answering an email in thirty seconds is nice, but it isn't a true indicator of commitment. Taking on extra work beyond regular hours just to say "yes" is not a strength—especially if it comes at the cost of your rest.
The skills behind the lessons
My takeaway isn’t that Gen Z has everything figured out. None of us does. Rather, my takeaway is that they taught me an invaluable lesson: curiosity (in the form of big questions) and self-respect (in the form of boundary-setting) are essential skills.
Asking questions creates understanding; boundaries create sustainability. Together, they foster a work environment rooted in clarity, respect, and high performance.
I know these skills can easily be stunted as we ascend into corporate roles. By the end of the internship, my fellow interns had taught me one last critical lesson: I used to have these exact same skills. But over the years, I had unlearned them, convinced they wouldn't serve me well in the professional world.
I was wrong. Gen Z’s emotional intelligence turned our internship into a flourishing ecosystem, and now, I carry these relearned skills with me wherever I go.