This week’s been a little hectic, hence the blog post being even later than usual. I actually got to experience first-hand Madrid’s hospital system! Not to worry, I just came down with a light case of Covid. I did sadly miss a trip to Valencia. Now I’m well and almost ready to return to work, although unfortunately I don’t have many great pictures. With that said, here’s what I could scrap together, along with a blog on doing things without a blueprint.

Here’s me with a couple friends out in the evening the night before I came down with COVID!

Where do you experience uncertainty/unclear directions/ambiguity in your internship? How are you navigating it?

I think I have the most structure out of any of the interns. From what I’ve heard ones with the most structured day also do the exact same thing day after day, hour after hour. For example, one intern shadows medical professionals but without constantly requesting work stays in the main room. Another listens to their boss take calls, one gets a 30-minute assignment each day, and another two fill the same data into the same excel sheet day after day.

The first thing my supervisor showed me when I arrived is the internship-long schedule they have laid out for me. I believe I’ve mentioned this before. It’s a google sheet divided into blocks, with each block containing blogs, accompanying Instagram posts and stories with blog content, and a newsletter at the end of each block summarizing the last couple blog’s content. There’s quite a lot of writing , designing, and scouring the app for appropriate activities; enough to fill the two months I’ll be here for.

The room for interpretation is in my execution of my supervisor’s assignments. I’m given a prompt and a rough word limit, and the rest is up to me. For example, one prompt was how to start the new year on a limited budget. I wasn’t sure to how to answer the prompt, so I did some research online. I ended up scrolling through teacher forums until I found common problems. Then I scrolled through educational blogs until I found popular solutions that I put my own spin on. I compiled a few recommendations, such as using materials in nature and requesting donations, along with a couple of DIY teacher tools, and wrote a blog on them.

This is just one example of how I handed an open-ended prompt. In many instances I didn’t consult the internet, just my own creativity. As ambiguity generally comes in the form of writing prompts without a right answer, I solve that ambiguity with my imagination. When I can’t, I consult outside sources, cite scientific articles on the benefits of bilingualism, or quote Nelson Mandela on how speaking a someone’s native language speaks to their heart.

Besides writing I do quite a bit of designing. For each blog there’s an Instagram post and story. This half of my work is the most challenging as I’m not very artistic. Thankfully, there’s a set template that I followed more or less, especially in the first few days. Eventually I became unsatisfied by filling the void of uncertainty with the same colors and image sizing. I started moving around text and images, adding additional images, and even inserting animations.

Recently, I even used two entirely new templates to create an Instagram post for a blog that didn’t fit the traditional introduction, five tips, and conclusion structure. The blog prompt was on why and how to use Smile and Learn’s proprietary learning paths. The learning paths are premade sets of activities increasing in difficulty divided by subject and age. I went into great length on the customizability of the paths, and chose a template that allowed for more text broken into legible chunks.

I can tell that being sick for the entire week and likely in constant bedrest for the next will be one of my biggest regrets coming out of the program. Everyone I meet, whether in Spain or the US, has been drumming into my head that two months is not a long time. Losing these two weeks will probably make this trip into even more of a blip in time than it is.

My resolution is to pay more attention to my health. With a better sleep schedule and other health habits I likely wouldn’t have fallen ill. No matter the case, I will stay in the moment and take every opportunity to experience what Madrid has to offer. So far, rooftop restaurants, the beautiful plazas like Santa Ana and Sol, and meeting the locals have been the experiences I treasure most.