We had the pleasure of interviewing Miquel Costa. He is the CEO of Visionario, a company in Barcelona, Spain that has hosted Absolute Interns in the past and that welcomed Martina Furano during the COVID-19 pandemic. A huge thanks to Miquel for his time!
As nations tackle the COVID-19 epidemic, a rapidly increasing number of employees across the world are working remotely as part of the efforts to mitigate the spread of the pandemic. Countries worldwide have enforced a full or partial lockdown and major firms have put recruitment on hold. Nonetheless, students and recent graduates can still show employers that they are willing to gain professional experience and a pandemic will not hold them back.
Each year we welcome students from all around the world to join our #AbsoluteTribe. Last year, over 55 different nationalities were represented in our programs!
We had the pleasure of sitting down with one of our colleagues; Maria Pizzo, she is an Italian-American expat who has been living in Spain for five years. In this interview, we will delve into her story from becoming a Program Coordinator to a full-time employee at Absolute Internship.
I always tell students how incredible and brave they all are by getting out of their comfort zones and making the important decision of going abroad for their summer internship. Fun? They will have loads of it, but they should keep in mind the main reason they are here is to show their talent as professionals and to improve their skills, in order to develop their future careers. In fact, if we analyze carefully, the same applies to Absolute Internship Program Coordinators - in my case, at the London Summer Program.
Reflecting back on the month I spent in Barcelona, I’m have an overwhelming feeling that there’s so much out there in the world for me to explore.
We were delighted to meet with Tobias Band, an Absolute Internship alumnus, in the glaring heat of the Barcelona sun. It was a joy to relive Toby's experiences, to laugh about memories of Shanghai, and generally catch up. So please enjoy this window into life before, during and after an Absolute Internship. A huge thanks to Toby for giving his time to us!
Coming here was a dream come true. I remember counting down the days until this opportunity was my waking reality. In the end, my expectations for myself and finally being here were different than I anticipated. I thought there would be more of a language barrier between the other interns and myself, but to my surprise, most people were from different parts of the U.S. Therefore, interacting and connecting was much more comfortable than I thought it would be. Furthermore, although there is a language barrier between the Spaniards and myself, I found that most of the people I encountered knew more English than I knew Spanish. Talk about a wake up call!
After just two days of being in Hong Kong, I started to feel a strange ache in my neck. At first I thought I was jet-lagged, but after a while I realised the root of this pain was from constantly looking up at all the tall buildings in “The Most Vertical City on Earth”. There is always something new to be spotted when changing your perspective in Hong Kong. When I got the bus on my second day to work, I went on to the top deck for the first time and was instantly disorientated as the city looked so different from the lower level.
On the first day of my internship I was extremely open, yet extremely nervous. I wanted to make a good first impression. My commute from the residence took around 45 minutes. I took the metro, which I found much easier to understand than taking the bus. When I arrived at the building I would be working in, I noticed that there were many other small businesses within the same facility. I made my way to the office where my internship would take place and when I walked in it was smaller than I imagined it would be. Everyone worked in the same open-plan room. There were many other interns too. My supervisor was not yet in the office, so a woman greeted me in Spanish. I am not the greatest at understanding Spanish unless the individual speaks slowly, so I was perplexed. Luckily, I happened to be at the internship with another participant of the Absolute Internship, and she spoke great Spanish. Lauren helped me so much with finding my way around the office and making me feel comfortable. She had been there a week or two already so she was very helpful.
I landed in the airport of Madrid, and I was absolutely confused and jet lagged. Still, I was so excited to have finally arrived for my Madrid internship. I met up with the transportation that was waiting for me outside of baggage claim, and met two other students I was carpooling with to the residence. Just like me, they were also coming from America and had never been to Spain before. I was so happy that we hit it off right away. As we finally made our way out of the exit (la salida), I was completely mesmerized by the beauty, (la belleza).
For the short amount of time I’ve been living in Madrid, life has thrown a lot of different lessons my way. During the last two months, I have been interning with a small sports management consultancy office called ” in Pozuelo de Alarcon". I wanted to share some of these small yet invaluable lessons as to truly attempt to describe my life in Spain.
The skyline gleamed of amber, striking each of the many steeples. We stood in a trance gazing across the horizon, the rich glow fulfilling the sky and land. It had been several days since we arrived in the city and we had all grown accustomed to the incredible antiquity of Stockholm, its beauteous greenery and waterways seemingly lining every sidewalk and roadway. Yet, this scene placed us in a state of awe unlike any before. The Sun’s crystallizing light glided across the rooftops with not just beauty, but the grace of sentimentality.
