This week, I started my internship at Vencon Research. I was anxious to start because I didn’t know what to expect. The commute from our hotel to the office is about 50 minutes, so I made sure to leave early enough, in case I had any issues with the buses or trains. Luckily, Jillian and I went to the office last weekend to make sure we knew which route to take to get there. One of the nicest things about Berlin is how easy it is to get around the city. The trains and buses are fairly easy to navigate and are much more efficient than the public transportation I have experienced in the U.S. The first day of the internship, everyone was extremely welcoming, and I met people from all of the departments. There are about 25 people that work in the office, so I was nervous about what I would be walking into. The people in the advisory department took me out to lunch, which helped calm my nerves a bit. While I am technically working on the advisory team, I spent a lot of the week learning about what other departments do at the company. I learned about the entire process the company goes through to produce reports for their clients, and got introductions from the data integrity, data automation, and business development teams. The office is fairly laid back, but it is obvious that everyone is still very focused on their work. My first task on my own was a small research project about artificial intelligence, specifically ChatGPT. My task was to focus on the threats and opportunities artificial intelligence poses for the consulting industry, particularly for compensation benchmarking consulting firms. Aside from this, I did not have other specific tasks to do on my own, so I spent a lot of my time with the data automation team. I learned about the softwares and coding languages they use to create tools that automate the creation of client reports. One specific problem they have been working on solving this week is creating a standardized naming tool for all of the different kinds of reports clients request. Because so many reports are created, the goal of the tool is to automate the naming process, regardless of what type of report it is and how many different pieces have to be included in the name. The past week has seemed pretty long, because I haven’t been too busy, so I’m hoping this week I will start to have more tasks and projects to work on. I plan to keep track of my tasks in my notebook at the beginning of each week to manage my time. I have really enjoyed working with the data automation team so far, so I want to make sure I am completing my tasks in a timely manner, so I am able to spend time in other departments aside from advisory.
Aside from my internship, this week has been spent exploring more of Berlin. I get out of work at around 5:30, so there is still plenty of time in the day to do other things. During the week, I shopped, walked around the city and tried a few new restaurants. It’s been so nice to walk around all of the different areas of Berlin, and I feel like the places to go and things to see never run out. There is also a park right across the street from our hotel, so it has been really nice to hangout there when I have free time. Over the weekend, I spent a lot of time with the rest of the group from Pitt, and it was really interesting to hear about how different everyone’s internship experience has been so far. We are all doing very different things and working in several different industries, so we have had a lot to talk about. On Sunday, we went to a huge flea market, and then all had lunch together. It’s been really cool to see the culture and styles in Berlin, because one of my coworkers told me that Berlin is so different from the rest of Germany. I didn’t know this before getting here, and I expected Berlin to be a lot more formal than it is. It seems like each area of Berlin has its own style and the city as a whole is so much more alternative and artsy than I had thought before arriving here. I am hoping that in the next few weeks, I am able to travel to other parts of Germany, particularly Potsdam and Dresden, which are pretty close to Berlin.