PLEASE Tell Me What You Want, What You Really Really Want

I am a type-A planner. I thoroughly enjoy going over every bit of information I can get my greedy little hands on in order to prepare for tasks ahead of me. And I will really get down into it, scouring for information so well that the FBI would be impressed. Or scared.

Upon finding out my internship placement, I did exactly as I always do. I spent about two hours going down the rabbit hole, looking up everything possible about the company I was to spend most of my time at in Brussels. And nowhere did I find what I was looking for: a clearly outlined list of expectations they had for their interns.

The inner planner in me began to freak out. I started religiously watching filmmaking videos, editing tutorials, and anything and everything that I felt was even tangentially related to video content production. Did I absorb anything from these stress-induced 1 AM binges? No. Did I desperately hope the gallons of information I tried shoving down my throat would somehow stick? Absolutely.

An accurate depiction of my late night rabbit hole

On my first day at my internship I was bracing myself for my supervisor to lead me into a dark room with a computer, commanding me to edit a video for a client that was due in an hour. (I am a worst-case scenario type of person, as you can likely see). That didn’t happen. Instead, the founder of the company offered my fellow intern and I coffee, and talked with us about what this company meant to him and the principles it was founded upon. We were asked what specific areas we were most interested in, what we were most excited about, and things we would love to pick up on throughout our time spent working.

This caught me by surprise, silly as that might sound. While I have had internships before, my Belgian internship was the first working in a field I hoped to pursue after college. My internship treated me the same as an internship in the US might: they genuinely wished to help interns gain experience and observe the inner workings.

I am not surprised at all between this similarity. While culturally there are differences in the workplace, I think both the US and Belgium understand how necessary it is to educate the next generation of workers. Internships nowadays are essential for securing jobs. They demonstrate to future employers your drive, as well as the skills you developed from your experience. And the value is recognizable. Now, even unpaid internships are so competitive that even securing an interview is worth bragging about.

The Belgian interns I had the opportunity to work with shared the same feelings I did. While previously I was told most Belgian interns were grad students and that not many undergrads sought out internships, that rumor was quickly expelled upon meeting my intern co-workers. Each day we would come in hungry for work, trying to soak up as much as we possibly could during the time we had. While I admit feelings of competitiveness would bubble inside of me when some interns were chosen to accompany account managers on shoots or picked over me for projects to work on, there was a feeling of camaraderie between us. We secured an internship at an amazing place of work. We were given this amazing opportunity.

While I’d like to say that before my next internship my nerves will be calm and I will refrain from my midnight binging, it really seemed to work out for me. And if that routine produced the wonderful experience I had throughout my spring internship, I think you’ll know what to find me doing the night before my big first day.