My first internship experience in the UK
Hello, I’m Yuki ：）I am an exchange student from Japan, Waseda University, and currently studying at the University of Nottingham as a Politics and International Relations student.As I am an exchange student, my time for studying abroad was limited when compared to the other students and therefore I made some goals for this exchange program to make the most of it.One of them was to apply for the Internship. My friend told me about the Advantage Award, and I thought this would be a great chance to put myself in a new environment. There were several workplaces in the Advantage Award placement, and I tried to pick up the roll which I could appeal and improve my previous skills. As I had the experience of managing the website, I applied for the social marketing department of the radio company called FMB radio, and I am happy to have gotten the role there. In this blog, I would like to focus on explaining what kind of skills I gained through this working experience.First of all, in terms of preparation for the appliance, I learned the importance of reflecting on myself and attained self-contemplation skills. I have done a part-time job as a tutor at the world history tutoring school back in Japan, but I have NEVERtried an Internship experience, let alone outside of Japan. Therefore, making the CV with full satisfaction required me a huge amount of effort. In Japan, people have to write their CV in a fixed form in their original handwriting, while CV here is made by typing with completely dependent on one’s creative design and contents. When I started making my CV, at first, I listed up what I have done in the past few years. By listing up my experiences, I was much easier to find my career interest, and what kind of skills I gained from those working and the other activities I participated in. Reflecting yourself might be overlooked, but this is very important when you write a persuasive CV because all the written contents should be based on your true experiences.Secondly, through this working experience, I improved my professional communication skills in English. As I have only worked in Japan, I always used Japanese whentalking with my boss or co-workers. Hence, I was very anxious about writing a business e-mail, talking with my boss, introducing myself to everyone in English at first, because it was difficult for me to find the same expressions in English. I was also worried whether the business manner is different from my home country, however, gradually, depending on how close I am to someone or how well I know a person, I got used to using or writing polite business expressions or be franker. Luckily, people at this company were all friendly and kind, so they sometimes taught me.Overall, I learned that knowing oneself may be taken for granted, but it should not be overlooked in terms of preparation for an Internship. Also, professional communication skill is always important regardless of the language in order to work efficiently. These are the two skills I improved by working at FMB radio company. I hope this experience would help people who are thinking to apply for an internship in foreign countries as I can say all the challenges would make you grow and help yourself in the future.
