Working in Brussels: Written In the Stars?

I’ve always been a sucker for astrology.

Seventeen magazine was the first to pique my interest. After begging my parents for a subscription at the ripe age of 13, I would skip through the juicy interviews with heart-throbs like One Direction and giddily await to read what my future had in store. Even today in 2020 the astrology craze is in full-swing. Readings are featured monthly, weekly, and even daily on major websites, and downloading apps such as Co-Star can give you detailed readings based on just your birthday and birth time.

Astrology was so attractive for me for two reasons:

1. As a type-A planner I love learning about a possible future in store

2. I am able to blame my indecisive nature on someone else.

Any guesses to what my sign is? Well if you’re into astrology like me you might be screaming LIBRA, and hey, you are right! I credit my sign to my best and my worst quality: my ability to see both sides to every story, and my crippling indecisiveness.

Further evidence proving my need to plan everything via one of the many astrology meme pages I follow

Just like a horoscope, I had a clear ‘map’ as to what I believed my work life in Brussels would be like. I wasn’t worried about adjusting to hearing of new cultural perspectives, I was good at that, at seeing both sides, I thought. However, I have learned that there is a big difference between being able to identify that there are different cultural perspectives, versus living in one.

My office was very international to say the least; languages would switch back and forth, seemingly depending on the mood. With the different languages and nationalities, I noticed, came different work styles. For instance, my one co-worker Aline, was French. She spoke quickly, told you exactly what she expected, and would get confused and almost taken aback if you had a question.

Pieter on the other hand was Dutch. He spoke much more relaxed, would check in with you as he was briefing you, and would continuously ensure that you had the time to do as he asked. While these differences in attitudes are not necessarily due to working in a culturally diverse environment, my experience in Brussels really helped me learn how to work with different people and their work styles.

Another element to my work life in Brussels that I was not able to predict was the ambiguity that came along with working in such a creative workplace. I was given responsibility and freedom I had never experienced before at an internship. More often than not, briefings were simply my superiors explaining what exactly our particular client was about, and what they desired in a video. My job was to plan everything in between. From the information I was given, I crafted proposals that would be given directly to the clients. I carefully selected everything from the wording to the fonts and colors used.

At first working under such lenient conditions proved difficult for me. My indecisiveness would kick in full swing and I would spend days obsessing over whether or not my proposal looked or read similar enough to the past proposals, changing the wording and the visual components hourly. I realized soon however, that my obsession with perfecting the visuals of these proposals was what made me stand out from other interns. I became known among Account Managers for making an effort to connect our proposals with our client’s brand identity, and their praise and acknowledgment with what I was doing really fostered a sense of pride and confidence with what I was doing.

Overall, my Brussels experience was anything sort of predictable- no astrologer could have guessed what was in store for me, or even the world as a whole with the outbreak of COVID-19. While we were forced to evacuate quickly, leaving behind more than a few personal belongings in order to meet weight requirements, I will carry with me the lessons and experience I gained from my time working in Brussels to my future endeavors.