10 km away from home

One of the hardest times I had in my 20 years of existence was the first two years living abroad in Finland, 9000km away from home. And I thought that no other place could give me such a hard time to grow wiser, but I guess this summer internship changed my initial thought. My company is 10km from my house, within the same city, within the driving distance, within the comfort zone I always call “home” yet it felt so strange. But familiar, and strange, at the same time.

Probably because this is the first time I work for an in-house company. Or probably the first time I work for such hierarchical enterprise. Either way, it brings about a feeling of importance in small manners, as well as detail-oriented way of working, which I was not familiar with.

For someone who believes that the uneasiness makes people grow wiser, I felt like I have grown a lot throughout this summer. Needless to say, there was not a single situation of ease I had encountered. I did everything out of the blue. My tasks were logistics related, which means I had to make price comparisons between different manufacturers for our publications, our medals, event t-shirts… I had no initial contact or anyone experienced enough to guide me through this, but through time I learned an effective method to make such comparisons.

It had been a long 3-month internship, and I would not want to mention all the hardships I encountered along the way. I just want to embrace the good things in life that it brought about, for instance working with the children, organizing art workshops for them and seeing their excitement when going on new adventures every day… The internship has taught me a lot about working life manner, how to talk to elder colleagues, how to turn down something without upsetting the business partners…, which I later on found very useful as it could be applicable everywhere in the world, the key is being polite and humorous in an appropriate way.

This summer, 10km away from my house, I grew a lot wiser and stronger by dealing with continuous inquiries from different people. I developed my empathy a bit more as I worked with children. I built my patience working with customers. And I think that it’s just right, not too much, but not too little to learn from an internship. I am proud of who I have become today.