I started my internship in September 2020 at Payvision as a Communications & PR intern. Since this was during the ‘middle’ of COVID I was not expecting to find an internship at all. In fact, I had planned to write my thesis that semester, after hearing all the challenges my peers were facing. However, when I found the job opening on LinkedIn, I knew I had to seize the moment and apply, and to my luck, I was offered the job!
I was both excited and nervous before my first day and I did not know what to expect. All my previous work experience was with smaller companies and I had never worked in a larger corporate before. While I was fortunate enough to be able to go to the office for the first few weeks, new Corona measures were put into place which resulted in a fully remote internship. It is definitely harder meeting new coworkers when you are working fully remotely. While I had met a few colleagues in person, I still felt very new and didn’t know what to expect. I decide upon myself that I would need to take initiative and stay involved and try to get to know more people within the company
One thing that I did not expect was the amount of autonomy I had and how valued I felt even if I was ‘only’ the intern. My manager and colleagues always asked for my opinion and constantly encouraged me to share my input. I had always imagined interns doing the grunt work that no one else really wanted to do. Of course, there were moments where I had to complete tasks that were not always fun, but the overall projects I was involved in really made me appreciate not only my internship, but it made me value my studies so much more. It was nice to know that I did make the right decision when choosing my bachelor’s degree.
Another aspect that I did not realize I would be so heavily involved in was the side of internal communications. During my studies, we’ve always been taught content from the perspective of external communications. Little did I realize how important and valuable internal communications were as well. Maybe I did not work in a large enough company in previous jobs, but I found the importance of internal communications and wondered why we did not really touch upon it during our studies. This also led me to conduct my internship research under the theme of internal communications.
While working from home is not as exciting or fun as going to an office. My overall consensus of this internship was that it was quite a success. I think being involved in a company that values and appreciates your input makes working so much better and easier, especially when working from. If I had to give myself a piece of advice for when I first started my internship, it would be to just not worry, seize the moment, and don’t be afraid to give you input and constantly ask for feedback.