It’s the last week… in Paris. Can’t believe that two months of time just filed by and I’m wrapping up my internship and leaving the city at the end of the week!
Two months, on the other hand, can’t be considered as a very long period. I wasn’t expected my whole value system, personality or thinking to change drastically simply after 2 months of stay here, but I did experience the new stimuli that I was looking for, which provided me with new motivation to explore the world, and more importantly, myself.
Doing an internship is not always a 100% enjoyable experience. Yeah it is true that sometimes we have to filled out rigorous application and beat other candidates to get a position, but the end result can be disappointing. I definitely had the experience of applying to an internship, trying my best to fulfill every responsibilities, but didn’t end up liking the whole experience at all. In French we might call it a “dommage”. However, even though I didn’t get to enjoy the internship, I couldn’t say that I learn nothing at all. Quite the contrary, I was actually able to gain some valuable information: what I don’t like to do and what I don’t want to be part of my career.
I view this perspective as having increasing importance in my decision of life choices. Yeah it’s true I am not a princess and I can’t just pick the things I like to do, but I do not want to be stuck in a future career with no motivation and passion at all for the position and my responsibilities. When you truly enjoy your career, you will more likely to view all work-related activities as part of your ambition to acquire more knowledge, to contribute more to the field, and to eventually obtain your cherished values and become the person you want yourself to be. Meanwhile, I am consciously aware that to truly achieve these goals, one must be ready to equip himself/herself with competitive abilities and criteria, so that reaching the state of being able to “choose what you want to do” can become more realistic.
During my internship, I have seen professionals who truly integrate passion into their careers, and subsequently consistently contribute new and groundbreaking ideas to the field. That’s such a powerful to force to encourage the whole field to develop and advance, to overcome challenges and to truly serves its function of helping people and advancing science. Of course, there have been some practices in the field (all around the world) that I did not like that much, and would rather not adopt such approaches. And, on a side note, even though I feel like the experience interning here has changed my mindset a lot and never stopped stimulating my thinking, there exist some precautions to apply what I have learned to other cultural environments. I would like to think of my experiences here as opening up more possibilities within my knowledge system, however it depends on actual situations whether those possibilities can be applied.