Anniina’s internships taught her that there are more opportunities out there for her than she realised
“An internship is eye-opening. I don’t have to just focus on books. I can use writing and research skills and go in a completely different direction with it.”
“Seeing that it’s not just for music or technical engineering students and that there’s also something for English students is great.”
“I love podcasts and I thought doing something like that would be completely different because that’s not something you get to do at uni. We get to do scripts and we get to do poetry and prose, but podcasting isn’t really a thing.”
“The researchers did all the research and looked into different articles, the podcast guests’ studies and theses, which they sent to me and I used to make a podcast structure,” Anniina explains. “I was writing an intro and writing questions for the guests, making bullet points of what I wanted them to address in their answers, making overall points, reference lists and even content warnings, to make sure the podcast was well-structured.”
“It is a bit eye-opening,” Anniina says, “because I don’t have to just focus on books. I can use writing and research skills and go in a completely different direction with it and it’ll still apply.”
“It’s good to know that there are other options and you don’t just have to become a teacher. You can use research skills and apply them to sociology podcasts, which has been really helpful for my mindset going into third year and knowing that I’m graduating in a year.”
“I think that confidence is a big one,” says Anniina, “especially in the workplace. I hadn’t had much work experience before this apart from babysitting and working in a grocery shop during the summer, so being part of that professional office environment was something that was new to me. Having experience of how to talk with co-workers, going out for lunch with colleagues and how to operate that space was useful.”
“It has made me proactive,” Anniina reflects. “I’d come in and suggest my ideas and we’d work together to figure out a plan. I was working together with colleagues but also being proactive and independent.”
“My duties changed in the middle of the internship. What I thought my job was going to be was researching the social impact and how to do podcasts, and I did that for the first few weeks – just looking up different podcasts for inspiration.”
“I had looked into everything that they needed to know already, research-wise,” Anniina remembers, “and then my supervisor said that if I was up for it, I could start experimenting with this audio program and start learning about audio engineering. So, I went in that direction a bit more and by the end of it I was producing a podcast and looking up jingles and sound effects, editing audio files, etc.”
“I really enjoyed the audio editing because Adobe Audition – the program that I used – costs a lot of money, and I’m not going to have the opportunity to use that unless it is for a company.”
“Doing English, I don’t get to do a lot of engineering or technical stuff, so getting that experience and having the freedom to play around with it – they gave me a full four hours just to experiment with it and have fun – was really enjoyable. I’d already done some research, but who gets to do audio engineering just like that?”
“I think that internships can be a really good way of getting your foot in the door for after graduation,” Anniina says, “because I’m now working with Fotonow as a volunteer and getting more work experience. They asked me to stay on if I wanted to and I said absolutely!”
“It allows you to get a foot in the door and bond with the team – networking-wise you can make good connections and if they need someone after graduation then they already know me and I’ve already done work experience with them, so that’s really useful.”
“Lee has been a heaven-send for the applications” Anniina says, recalling his help in finding her a placement for her work experience module. “I knew that I needed a placement, but because the module didn’t start until after the application deadlines for the internships, I kind of panicked and emailed Lee asking for help. He arranged a meeting between us to go through them together and talk through what I wanted out of this and what he thought would be fitting, and he made a list of two or three internships that he thought would be good for me and said to send him my CV and cover letter so he could forward them on.”
“It made it seem easy and he made it very manageable – he really helped a lot with that process. I think having that middle person was really nice, because he finds all of these opportunities and sends them forward, which is the hardest bit.”
“It felt like we were being looked after,” Anniina says, “but not in a babysitting way, by providing us with a professional who knows what he’s doing and is able to ask the right questions about the work that we need to do.”
“Fotonow was really helpful – they have someone who coordinates placements and internships because Fotonow is so big on offering work experience, so they had one person just focusing on that outreach aspect and were very on top of it.”
“They’ve shown me that it’s okay not to just focus on one particular direction,” Anniina emphasises, “but that you can build around your skills, especially when you’re just starting out, because there are so many different things that you can do. You can do one thing and then move onto something different. It takes the pressure off. I’d like to do more in third year.”
Don’t get intimidated by the job descriptions. Sometimes they sound very clever, and I think ‘well I can’t do an editorial position’ or ‘I can’t do this type of work’, but when you really boil it down – which Lee was really helpful with because he was picking apart the descriptions and telling me the skills that they are looking for – you see that you can go for it. Don’t underestimate yourself and just go for it anyway, even if it sounds a bit high-brow or a bit clever.
