I believe nobody was as excited to start the internship as me. I genuinely looked forward to it since the first semester of my first year at UvA. I knew some people loved academia and others would excel in the workforce. I thought I would be the latter. Even better, I thought getting an internship would be a breeze. As easy as it gets, I mean why would they hire me? I know those of you reading might be shaking their head at this point but there were high levels of delusion regarding my career. This blog, hence the title is how things did not go my way though.
As I was convinced getting an internship would be super easy I thought maybe I should do one abroad, Italy- I loved Italy and this would be a great opportunity, so why not? I started sending out my applications all over Italy convinced it should not be that hard. Well, after a month of daily intense searching and over 50 rejections my Italian dream shattered and it was crunch time to find one in Amsterdam at least. So I searched, and finally got a callback. A sports travel company, as a marketing intern. Though it was not my first choice, I was happy I got an internship and marketing is something I wanted to do anyway. So I agreed, signed the contract, and waited for my first day.
I do not know if it is the excessive amount of TV I watched growing up or the city girl mentality but I really thought doing Marketing would be right up my alley. I mean I always knew I would want to work at the office, I have seen Mad Men, what would go wrong… A lot. Firstly the team I worked with was no more than 20 people- although all very nice and cordial, none too thrilled about communication. Out of the 20, 10 came to the office and this included everyone- all departments. Weeks went by and my ever-so-optimistic attitude on what was included in marketing slowly started to fade. I thought it was creative, but I did realize that the organization had an agenda, and the grunt work was for the interns. In a way, I was sad but my supervisor was mostly nice to me so I did not have the heart to complain.
Every day, I would come into the office, sit at my desk and do manual work with wordpress- copying and pasting content for Swedish and Finnish sites, in those respective languages when I did not speak any. nine- five, five days a week. In the defense of the internship, I did learn significantly more about the tools that are needed in the practical world, like WordPress, HTML, and Photoshop, so for that, I am thankful. Over time, I felt drained and sad, I would not wait for my internship to be over, I mean I used to leave my desk the second it turned 5 PM- I really felt bad about it, but my mental health needed it.
The 5 months that I did my internship passed, slowly but it passed. However, at that point I was unhappy. Where did my persona that loved the idea of working go? I was unmotivated and convinced I would hate every job. My world was actually in shambles, I always thought I would love working. That is when I realized I could not actually let this b my experience. One day, right before my internship was over I was checking my email and LinkedIn sent me an opportunity via suggestion. It was huge… An HR job for a big fashion house. I never considered HR, but I knew I did not like Marketing. I applied, not expecting them to even consider me. Long story short, they did! Now, I am doing a personal internship on the side, in a huge company I love, and apparently loving HR as well.
Sometimes things do not go the way you expect, but working hard even when you do not feel like it will always turn out in your favor, best case- you do what you love, worst case- at least you will learn about what you don’t want, which is already a good first step.