17 Jul My First Days at Work
It’s about 7:30 and I’ve pushed snooze on my alarm a few too many times. I finally decide to get up and start getting ready for another day at my internship. After finding the comfiest but business appropriate outfit I get dressed and head on out to go to the office. Before taking my 30 minute walk to work (my main excuse to not use the gym while in Shanghai) I grab a yogurt drink and stop by and get an iced coffee from the downstairs café if I really want to splurge for the day. I really enjoy getting to walk to work because I’ll take different routes and look at the little shops around the French Concession whether it is a Western shop or a local eatery. After arriving to my work and sweating a few liters (oh yeah, adjusting to the rest of the world’s way of measuring things) I head to the 5th floor and go in the office. Usually one or two of the other interns will already be there before me and we’ll chat for about 10 minutes before getting to work.
The company I’m working with is pretty small but I get to work with 4 other interns from different programs or just interning on their own and it’s been a blast getting to meet them and hang out. A girl and a guy are both French/Chinese so they do lots of communicating with my supervisor since they speak French fluently. There is a Spanish guy here who is also fluent in French so they communicate a lot as well. Then there is a girl also from Texas with an internship program here (small world amiright?) and that makes up the interns in the office. Then there is the owner of the real estate company and her partners from France. It’s cool getting to work around French speakers and Chinese speakers because I’ve learned how to work with other languages being spoken around me.
My most recent task I’ve been doing is to research the different clubs and bars for expats (foreigners who move to Shanghai) that my supervisor could use to plan events for hangouts with people around Shanghai. It’s really cool to research places expats hangout and learn how the social scene in Shanghai is different from America. My main task for today will be to edit my supervisor and her partners Linkedin account and make sure the English was translated well. I like this task because I’ve never used LinkedIn and now I get some experience with it and can actually use the information I learned this week at our Speaker Series about how to expand their profiles. And after a lunch in cute cafes of either French/Japanese/Italian/Western food with the interns and a younger permanent worker I finish my tasks and head out around 5:30 or 6:00 and walk back with the other Texan in my office since we both are staying at the same Hotel/Apartment complex.
I can honestly say working at this internship is nothing like my classwork back at school and I can’t wait to take this experience back home. I’ve learned how things work when dealing with international clients and companies and how detail oriented tasks I thought could be general end up being. Going through this program and getting a real world work experience has really shown me what it will be like being an adult after graduating and I feel like I already have a head start over everyone I know back at school!!
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