18 Feb A visit to my daily intern life
After speaking to a few other interns, I gathered that the majority opinion was, “working isn’t that fun after all”. Well, for me, I thought that I was pretty lucky to be working at my marketing firm. My daily tasks are pretty interesting and meaningful, ranging from designing marketing posters, photo shooting at various locations, coming up with proposals and reports, attending meetings with clients and other stakeholders, and being involved in creating various marketing materials.
Every morning, I will leave my hotel at 9am and will reach the office before 10am. I actually feel more relaxed when doing this internship, as compared to when I am studying, for instance, I even have time to watch some news on TV and face time my family before leaving for work. I will be greeted by a gust of not-so-fresh but cold air upon stepping foot out of my hotel building, but I am so glad the quality of air is getting better and better now, according to news reports. Then, I will be squished around with the wave of metro people — I have too, got accustomed to the “practice” of most Shanghai people who take the metro and I found it easier to navigate around the underground metro.
As mentioned from the previous blog, my office is on the 20th floor of the IFC building. The office layout is an open setting, and it is really easy to converse with my colleagues. However, I realised the office culture is pretty quiet and individualistic. My colleagues are engrossed in their daily tasks and hardly even pay attention to us, and there are just some short conversation going around which lasts for only a few minutes in their small groups, then people would be back to work again. I feel really lucky that the colleagues in my group are really friendly and helpful, as I spend most of the time with them.
At this point, I think I should briefly mention what my firm does. It is a marketing, PR and events company that mainly helps in the promotion of American products into the China market. Those products include Sunkist Navels, American Pistachios, Wild Blueberries, Alaskan seafood, California milk, and some other American products. On the first day, Tina and I were allocated in the group which markets pistachios. I am really happy with this responsibility, because I love munching on pistachios as snacks, and I thought that it is a really tasty and healthy product to promote to the public.
I am mainly allocated tasks by my supervisor; meanwhile, I also help out my other teammates with their responsibilities. I really like my teammates and I thought that each of them have some strong skills and character that I could learn from. Interning for the first time in my life, I thought that this company was a really awesome place to have a good picture of how an office operates. I was assigned to real life tasks, which I thought were way more interesting and meaningful, as compared to what I do in my studies.
I got to realize I am more of a “doing” kind of person. I will share more about my thoughts about working in the “real world”, as compared to study life. Signing off and getting back to work!
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