John was an Application Engineer Co-op for Waystar during Spring 2025.
Briefly explain what you did and the result of your internship.
I got to work with a team which helps simplify healthcare payments with software we offer to clinics around the nation. My team specifically works with helping doctors get responses much faster from insurance companies if a patient is authorized for a specific treatment given the circumstances, giving the doctors one place to go to for their information, rather than having to reach out to dozens of insurance providers every day.
My role specifically to help with building the user interface for a new feature which allows doctors to manage and change data on certain medical service providers so they don't have to type in the same information for a certain provider every time they are seeking authorization for a new client. That also involved connecting this to an API that our team built to store each client's data, and save them a lot of time.
The result of this and other projects was that my head basically exploded. I have felt almost completely underwater since day 1 of the internship, and I'm loving it, because every day I'm in an environment where I know very little compared to my peers, so I have grown incredibly in these past few weeks simply because I find myself in an environment where non-stop learning is necessary to keep up. I get the feeling that I'll go back to school with superpowers.
What did you learn on your internship that you were not expecting to learn?
I expected to learn a lot of useful coding knowledge for sure, but rather than just learning how to build stuff, I've learned a ton about how to follow good principles to build things that others can build on, how to learn and focus more effectively, and how to smoothly operate as a team when working on a software project.
How have your future plans changed because of what you learned from your internship experience?
I am more daring and ambitious with my major than I previously was. I have applied to and been accepted to be a TA for my most difficult class this upcoming semester. I also applied for the Mars Rover team, and reached out to a professor to interview to be in a special course held by him next semester. I am no longer settling for the bare minimum in my field of study. I am less scared to be in places where I am the dumbest in the room, but I'm actually excited for and seeking out those opportunities. If this internship offered me a job I'd also probably take it and finish school part time, which I did not previously consider.
Please share how your experience led to personal inspiration or insightful revelation.
This internship gave me consistency. Every day, I took the train for 30 minutes, then biked for 10 minutes to get to my internship. The first bit of revelation was to take the train instead of taking my car. The second bit was to use time already built in to my day for something valuable, so I followed the prompting to read the Book of Mormon for a certain amount of time every day on the train ride to work. And because that part of my day never changes, my Book of Mormon study has been more consistent than it has been in a while. This consistency of lifestyle has also led the way for me to follow other promptings on healthy habit building.
Another piece of inspiration I have received thanks to this internship is that there are certain things in my life blocking my ability to learn quickly, focus well, and work with full integrity. This internship highlighted those weak spots, and helped me to make efforts in my life to be less distracted, more deeply invested in learning, and more intentional about how I spend my time according to what I have agreed to.
Would you recommend this internship to other students?
Yes. You need to be in vulnerable positions to grow the most. This is the place to be.
Is there anything else you would like to say regarding your internship?
I wish everyone was required to have an internship, but then again, if it was required, it might not be nearly as meaningful. Students need to actively do things that stretch them beyond the curriculum, and you cannot receive all the benefits of elected challenges by replacing it with a more demanding curriculum. Doctrine & Covenants 58:26
