Stop apologizing for having food allergies. Most likely they order food in, and they will just pass on whatever restrictions you have to whoever they order from. And guaranteed you’re not the first person with some sort of dietary restrictions. Better to say, I am allergic to x, y, z, but I have no problem bringing my own lunch if that’s a problem.

Yes – In my workplace, this would be bad advice. Many supervisors/Directors/heads of Depts here prefer that all work to subordinates be filtered through them – both to protect the employee from being taken advantage of and to protect the supervisor’s use of the employee’s time.

If you find out ahead of time that you’re going to Le Poisson, look up the menu ahead of time, call the restaurant if necessary. Know before you get there exactly what you can order without requiring modifications (other than very simple things like “sauce on the side”).

If you’re working in a big organization, the person organizing the meeting probably won’t have any further trouble getting your meal right beyond passing along the instructions to catering, and food is their job, so you don’t have to worry about it.

Good for you on figuring out how to do your life differently than role models in your family! I hope your husband is able to give you emotional support through this. Good luck to you.

One other first week tip – ask if there are any reports/procedures/ industry publications you should review if you have any downtime if your mentor has a lot of meetings, etc. Reading an issue of the latest industry journal or company newsletter may not be all that interesting, but you’ll look a lot more studious than the other bored intern down the hall surfing the web or texting.

When I was an intern a few years ago I had a great mentor/manager set.
– Introduce everyone on the team and explain their role even if the intern won’t be working with them.
– Explain the differences between your team and others (especially helpful if the work is similar, but not the same)
– Include the intern in meetings even if they aren’t doing work related to the meeting. It helps them feel like part of the team and is a good learning experience. Obviously not every meeting, but enough to get a good sense of the other responsibilities.
– Have a catch up chat after meetings for the first couple weeks. I often had so many questions that were very basic and I didn’t want to waste the time of managers. It was great to be able to talk about background, acronyms, and reasoning without feeling like you should have known the answers.
– Give feedback on work. This is especially helpful and I didn’t see enough mentors/managers doing it at my internship. If you know one person wants something formatted a particular way, tell your intern before they turn in the work.
– Explain the best way to contact people, especially you. Do you prefer email, IM, stopping by your office? How should they approach different levels? This is a subtlety that often goes overlooked.
– Set up weekly 1X1s. It’s great to check in and also a great way to talk about things other than work for 5 minutes.