Internships are getting a bit of a bad press at the moment, and there are a lot of horror stories about year abroad students in particular being majorly exploited for little or no money. Even among my friends I've heard of people being forced to do overtime or run personal errands for lazy bosses on a power trip, and it's so so unfair, and makes me realise how lucky I've been with my placements.
The worst thing is that it is just luck - most people sort out their internships way before the start of the year, with the overseas aspect preventing them from meeting their boss or being able to go in and get a feel for the office environment. So in defence of the humble internship, here's a summary of what I've done and learned over the year.
Both of my internships in Italy were unpaid, but luckily between the Erasmus grant and Student Finance there wasn't a financial issue, and I was happy just to have found placements in the industries I was most interested in, particularly my one in Rome, which was working as a reporter for an online newspaper and so was basically exactly what I wanted to do. I became well-versed on gross Italian foods, radioactive boars, the ever-amazing Pope, Berlusconi's dog, the hottest Italian athletes and best Italian chat-up lines - some personal hightlights among the 100 or so articles I got to write, but it was just really fun being part of the small team and hunting out Italy's best news stories, as well as sourcing interviews and features.
Alongside my Rome internship, I was offered some paid work writing freelance articles for a local magazine, which was great I think may even have been my first time ever getting paid for writing. My first article involved scouting out Rome's top brunch spots (where I got to sample their wares for free) and the second was a round-up of cultural events going on in the city, for which I got free tickets to an international dance festival. From meeting other foreign journalists through my placement, I had quickly learnt the value of a well-timed, shameless 'profession drop', if that's a thing - it's amazing how quickly a hefty brunch bill can transform into a stack of complimentary pancakes once you whack out the 'did I mention I'm a journalist' card (seems to work regardless of whether you're actually in the food reviewing business). I'm also not quite sure why journalism seems to involve so much brunch, but who's complaining?
So one of the main attractions of my Berlin placement, in PR, was finally getting my first ever proper wage, something which is depressingly absent from journo internships in most countries, but having worked here for a while now, it's also been interesting to see what goes on in the other side of the industry.
I'm working for a digital agency, or an 'ideas and innovation agency' as it enigmatically refers to itself. Although the Berlin office has only been open for a couple of years, it's already won several awards, and worldwide the company has the impressive accolade of being the most awarded ad agency, so it was quite daunting to turn up with embarrassingly little knowledge of the digital world. I mean, I know my way around Facebook, 4od and the part of YouTube with all the Let It Go covers as well as anyone, but know nothing about the behind-the-scenes coding and binary(?) stuff. As I'm interning with the company's PR Director, I'm not involved in any of the actual projects - which is just as well, as they're all incredibly techy, with everyone's desks crammed with a suitably intimidating number of screens, all spouting lines of code or fancy graphs - but my job is to help with promoting the projects and the agency in general.
This has involved helping people in the company prepare for press interviews, helping with visits and talks at the office for design students, writing and translating press releases about the agency, and helping plan and organise events, working on everything from finding a candyfloss machine rental with the option of orange coloured candyfloss (surprisingly difficult) to marketing the event across social media to creating name badges for guests. My boss has created a strong contender for the world's most detailed spreadsheet, which has every single task necessary for the event, down to things like 'make sure curtains are drawn' and 'make back-ups of the back-up copy of the guestlist. It's a step up from the Tesco Value vodka runs and brainstorming a bizarre costume theme which were the cornerstones of our Entz event planning at uni.
Then there's internal communication, which accounts for a surprising amount of the PR role. In a huge company with over 1,500 employees worldwide, the bosses try to make sure everyone stays up to date on what the other offices have been working on, so there's an internal newsletter each week which I've been helping put together (favourite task being the interviews for the weekly employee profiles, in particular the revelation from one of the managers that she knows how to milk a cow). And within the Berlin office, I'm in charge of sending out a daily press review, which involves reading all the day's tech and digital news and sending out summaries of the major stories, in Germany and worldwide. I have my suspicions as to how much notice anyone takes of this, but if nothing else it's been a handy crash course for me to figure out what the company actually does and what's going on in the industry. It's also taught me loads about things like which jobs are most at risk of being replaced by robots and how hackers can control your home via your toaster and stuff so that's always good to know.
And of course, there's the admin. A lot of my time has been spent putting together and updating various documents; calendars of work and awards across the agency, submissions for newspaper articles, the agency's profile on industry websites, employees' biographies. Generic internship stuff, but it's nice to know that my little bit of research is being used for a pitch, and that my work has helped someone prepare for an interview or something.
