This is officially my last post for my time in Toronto. These past two months have been life changing and I am extremely glad I decided to participate in the International Internship Program. Despite being the only student from the University of Pittsburgh, I decided that Toronto offered the best location for me to fulfill all of my various goals for the summer. I ended up making dozens of new friends from numerous universities across the U.S., such as Colorado Boulder, Cal Berkeley, Michigan St. and many more. In addition to other American students, I had the pleasure of getting to know students from Italy, Australia, China, and Canada. Furthermore, my internship placement could not have been more perfect. I was fortunate enough to land my position as a Research Associate with Pycap Venture Partners, a small venture capital firm in downtown Toronto. I really enjoyed working with my fellow interns every day, creating great connections along the way. This program allowed me to experience an internship that I wouldn’t have been able to find on my own with my current experience back in the U.S.
Throughout this two month experience, I have had the opportunity to grow, personally, academically, and professionally. Personally, I have been able to increase my cultural awareness and global competence while living in Toronto. Toronto is one of the most diverse cities in the world, allowing me to immerse myself into the city, helping me gain a great appreciation for diverse cultures. I also increased my ability to be independent. Living on my own in a new city without knowing anyone forced me to get out of my comfort zone to navigate public transportation, keep up with my cleaning and cooking, and make new friends. I have noticed that I am a lot more comfortable spending time by myself after this experience and depend less on other people. Academically, I have been able to apply the knowledge I have gained from my Pitt Business courses into real life scenarios earning valuable experience. Oppositely, I learned several new skills on the job including financial forecasting or valuations, that I hope to be able to apply to my classes coming this fall, such as Investment Management and Corporate Finance. Professionally, I was able to experience my first role in a finance focused position. This provided me the ability to learn both technical and soft skills that you just can’t acquire in the classroom. I learned about professionalism in the work place, whether its showing up early for meetings or learning to work with people who have differing work styles. I was able to experience large amounts of freedom in the work place, getting to work from home, setting my own deadlines, and completing tasks the way I wanted to. This left me with a greater sense of responsibility for my actions and appreciation for the autonomy I was given in this internship. Lastly, I helped refine my leadership skills, constantly working in groups, as well as my communication skills, working with coworkers from different countries and backgrounds.
I have been able to takeaway numerous things from this experience. One of the key takeaways from this internship is that it helped me refine my search for future opportunities and my future career. It helped me realize certain fields that I am interested in, such as Real Estate Technology or Asset Management, and also allowed me to recognize the sectors in which I have little interest. This improved idea of what I want in the future is vital because it allows me to help tailor my last two years at Pitt Business towards my future plans. I also will be bringing back the general knowledge I gained within the finance industry. Working within that environment for two months, I was able to immensely improve my finance industry knowledge. This will be extremely valuable seeing that I am a Finance and Business Information Systems dual major. I hope that I can apply what I learned within the workplace into my upcoming courses and I hope that my new knowledge will give me an edge this fall. Finally, the last major takeaway from this experience is that realized I am capable of anything I set my mind to. Throughout this experience, I was pushed to expand my own boundaries in all three capacities I discussed above. I have realized that I perform my best when under pressure and out of my comfort zone. I rise to the occasion to accomplish the task at hand and this experience helped me understand that.
Signing off,
Derek Frappa