Hej! It’s now the beginning of my 3rd week interning in Stockholm at Boulebar. Last week was another fun week of completing some independent research and work. This was only a 4 day work week this week because Friday is a big holiday in Sweden, Midsommar! Later in this blog I will quickly reflect on my Midsommar experience this past weekend and share about all of the culture, history, and traditions I was able to learn about and experience.

Last week I worked in one of the Boulebar venues, Rålis, for 2 of the 4 days of the week. My supervisor often works at this venue during the week so I was able to work closely around her and ask for any feedback, or questions if any arose. I mostly just sat and observed the venue casually as I completed my work, noticing how a Boulebar naturally functions. Each group would come into the venue very eager and excited for the experience which was very fun to see! On Monday of last week, I was responsible for shipping the summer line of merchandise out to the venues in Gothenburg (western coast of Sweden), and the locations in Copenhagen as well as sorting the merch for our 5 locations in Stockholm. I worked with the CMO of the company to set up and figure out how we would display this new merch at the Liljeholmen location which is located directly below the head office I work at. In addition to this location, I delivered and partially set up and figured out how we would display the merch at the Rålis location which would prove to be more difficult as the venue didn’t have a given space for a shop, instead, we ultimately decided we would display the merchandise in the bar area where many guests would be able to notice, and admire the merch while waiting or enjoying their drinks. We are planning this week to finish distributing all of the merch so that mini side project I was assigned to help with will be over but it has been very interesting to work with a CMO to see how exactly they think when figuring out the display of merchandise, even though this internship is primarily logistics focused, its been nice to delve into many different operations in the business and just overall get a good idea of each persons job and how this company runs.

So far in my weeks working here I’ve faced a lot of uncertainty, I’ve never had an internship before and I really had no idea what to expect going into this. When I arrived here I was given a document broadly outlining my plan and expectations for me over the course of the internship. It gave me different tasks to complete and work on in the hopes of bettering the company as a whole. After my first 2 days where my primary focus was seeing all of the systems, and participating in onboarding activities I started to shift my focus on my own accord to this document. I didn’t get specific directions from my supervisor of what to do after onboarding but I figured it a good idea to begin with this work. My first objective was to create a purchasing guideline for managers of the company in situations where they didn’t have a contracted supplier for any given thing they were in need for. I had never made a purchasing guideline before but decided to do independent research on how to make one and what to include in one. I spent a big part of my first week completing this guideline and working pretty much independently without much formal instruction. My supervisor was working in the venue most of the week so I was (somewhat) on my own, although she was always reachable by chat. I checked in a few times, sharing my work thus far and expressing any questions I had to her just ensuring I keep an open dialogue as I feel that’s an important thing to do, especially, when you’ve never really had experience completing work like what was required of me.

I would just say overall so far, my internship was been very open ended, I haven’t necessarily been given due dates and timelines for my work, which is a good and a bad thing at the same time. I appreciate the unstructured nature of it but the con of that is that I constantly want to make sure I am on the right path and doing the right thing that is expected of me. I’ve sat down and specifically went over my work with my supervisor a couple of times and she has been satisfied with what I’ve done which has been a sigh of relief on multiple occasions. I only intend on keeping our dialogue more in depth and specific as my work improves and gets more close to a finished product.

Now I will tell you all quickly about my Midsommar experience this past weekend. Me and my friends here in Stockholm traveled out to Södertälje which is about an hour west of Stockholm, there we attended a traditional Midsommar festival complete with traditional dancing, and a ceremony where we got to watch the Maypole be raised up followed by more dancing and singing which was all amazing. My impressions of Midsommar pre departure were nothing that strong. I had watched the horror movie about Midsommar with Florence Pugh, and while I wasn’t particularly scared of running into a rural Swedish cult and being brainwashed like in that movie I definitely was a bit hesitant (more than usual) to fully embrace Midsommar. As soon as the celebrations and festivities began though my opinion of it changed 180, I was so impressed and really appreciated the whole thing (even if I had no idea what they were saying as they were speaking in Swedish) seeing hundreds and hundreds of native Swedes be so happy, filled with joy, and an eagerness to celebrate their holiday really opened my mind to Midsommar as a whole, all of the traditions were amazing and beautiful to experience and I’m very very glad to of been in Sweden during this time as its their biggest holiday of the year.

Anyways, tack så mycket for reading!

Hej då!!