As I’m writing this it still feels weird to me that I am not in Berlin. Instead of waking up in the morning to take the S-Bahn across the city to work, I wake up and drive to work. It takes about the same amount of time, but one was across an entire city. The other is in actuality not that far from my house, it just takes forever to get to. The Germans really do have public transportation down perfectly, and I must say I miss it. I love driving, but there is something nice and easy about just being able to take a train across the city at any hour of the day. There are so many little differences in my everyday life that I notice, and I think it will take some time to get fully used to being back in America
Throughout this summer I think I have grown a lot in many different areas. The biggest two areas I grew in would definitely be professionally and academically, but I have also grown in other areas like cooking. I think my cooking skills improved a lot over the summer. I think this would mostly be because of the cheaper cost of food that allowed me to experiment more and try new things.
As for my professional growth, I think I have come away with a lot of hard and soft skills. As for hard skills: my excel skills have improved greatly, I learned how to use PowerBI, and I have developed skills in working with invoices. I think these hard skills will help me a lot both at Pitt and in my future career. For one, Excel is used in many Pitt Business classes and in so many finance jobs. Having a good understanding here will help me greatly in both. I do not think PowerBI is used at Pitt, but it is definitely a tool used by many companies that could help me in my future career. Invoice work will probably not help me too much at Pitt, but could help me in my future career. Even if I do not end up working with invoices, having that knowledge can be very helpful in many finance situations. In terms of soft skills, I think I have greatly improved my overall communication and teamwork. This is definitely the area I grew the most in. I also learned to find a good level of assertiveness in the workplace. Being assertive is needed to make sure your voice is heard, but you also don’t want to be overly assertive and rude.
Academically, the first thing that comes to my mind for growth is German. I have been taking German since eighth grade, and never did it improve as much as it has over this summer. I spent almost every day all day speaking German, and as such it has reached a very good level. I would not yet say I am fluent, but I think I am getting close. Most conversations became second nature to me in German, and at points, I would dream in German. Outside of German, I think my time management skills improved a lot. This is something that could arguably be put in professional as well, but it is something I have historically struggled with academically. Working a regular 9-5 has improved them a lot; however, I would still say that they are far from perfect.
I’ve come from this experience with a lot of takeaways, but there are a couple that stand as the biggest. The first is that no matter how daunting something may be I can do it. Going into this I was very nervous about how both my finance and German skills would serve me in the workplace. At first, it was definitely a bit rough but I kept working on it and eventually got to a place where I could see all my work pay off. This is something I plan to apply in all my work moving forward both at Pitt and the workplace. No task is too big or daunting for me. My second takeaway is that I think finance is where I want to work in the future. This internship confirmed for me that I want to work in finance. As for the healthcare aspect, I am not as sure if I would want to work in a healthcare firm. This will be very helpful in my future job search, as I will at least have some direction.
I am very grateful for my time in Berlin and with Kenbi. It was a great summer!