By sdemetry
Hello, Hello GW,
Once again, you are reading the musings of Stephanie Demetry- a Junior spending one year in Berlin. Unlike my last few entries, however, there is much more exciting internship-related information to relay as I round out my third month of work with The Nature Conservancy.
Let me start by saying that I have been given much more freedom and responsibility than I was anticipating. As an intern with TNC's DC branch last spring, I was not trusted with very many concrete tasks- as many of you are probably familiar with, I instead ripped out staples, scanned and shredded documents for 16 hours a week. Here in Berlin I have already prepared power-point presentations for the Team to present at international conferences, developed a public funding strategy for a project involving reform of the timber industry in Southeast Asia, and am currently working on starting and building up a database of company profile reports for all organizations involved with TNC.
It has all proven to be a lot of work in combination with my studies, and I've been expected to work outside of the office as well- however, it's extremely rewarding.
I would like to think that I'm making a great impact on the local community- my powerpoint animation skills have been highly praised, and the new, young, "tech-savvy" intern, as I have been unofficially labeled, will be trusted with various important presentations throughout the year as well. I am particularly proud of the fact that I've managed to hoodwink everyone into thinking that I am some sort of Microsoft Works Guru.
All that I have done here in the last three months is real work that will benefit TNC both immediately and in the future, and that not only keeps me motivated to keep doing my absolute best work, it also makes me much more appreciative of, what I consider to be, a "true" internship. I am not being taken advantage of as unpaid work, but rather I feel as though I'm being treated as an equal in the office- they really want me to learn the ropes and become more comfortable with international environmental conservation. I feel much more like a colleague than a volunteer staple-remover, and that is a welcome change from the DC intern-environment that I've grown accustomed to.
On another note, the international aspect of this organization is also quite fascinating to me- I've had conference calls with my previous bosses from the United States, and we are now collaborating on an international project. Getting things done with different time zones and across different languages is definitely more difficult than I imagined. But, when everything works out it becomes all the more satisfying to know that your voice and hard work is spanning across continents.
I am now even more excited to see what the second half of this experience will bring. I have a solid project lined up that will take up the majority of my time between now and the end of the year, but once that is done, I'm not sure what will be waiting for me. Hopefully, I continue to acquire responsibility and do work that I can be proud of. We'll see!
Until next time,
SD