How can an internship at an event management organization in a different country teach you something in the middle of a pandemic?
Hey! My name is Gabriela and for the past months I have spent my work days trying to prove to people that communication strategies are actually useful and can help achieve positive results if you keep trying. It all started when I was hunting for internships back in February, and after multiple unsuccessful tries and almost giving up and thinking to take an extra semester, I was offered a position at an event management organization in Moldova – Media Show Grup. At first, I was excited to finally be able to graduate this year but then as I was digging into it, uncertainty and fear started getting into my head. How can I intern for an events organization remotely? Will there be a language barrier? What will it mean that I am the only communications person in the whole team? But I decided to take the risk and see.
At the beginning of the internship, I was mostly looked at as a foreign experiment, hopefully for them a positive one, but still. The team did not have a marketing or communications team, so for them most of my ideas seemed “too much effort” and unsure if they would work. Why bother spending time and resources on communication strategies when word of mouth works perfectly? Therefore, from that moment I was set on proving them wrong and proving myself that I did not just spend three years studying something completely useless. I started with doing some market research to get to know this sector of business better and see what makes a company successful and attractive. I would collect all useful knowledge and examples, attach theories and strategies from communication science courses and put everything in a very professional looking PowerPoint presentation. After a couple of presentations and various meetings things started slowly moving. Finally social media platforms became alive again and content was shared with viewers and followers.
Now, looking at the work done I can say that I was more optimistic about the results we would achieve, but seeing that there is already progress is a very satisfying feeling which further motivates me to create and work. Throughout this process I have learned to keep pushing, always communicate my ideas clearly, and take a risk. Sometimes it is scary to jump into the unknown and give ideas which might turn out to be terrible, but if we would not try, we would not know (however cliché that sounds). I would like to empathize with everyone who is stressed about finding an interesting internship in the middle of a pandemic to know that any offer you get can turn out to be great. Just know that it will take a lot of Zoom calls, a small supportive team and lots of space for creation to achieve something but will definitely be worth all efforts (at least because it helps you graduate).