Wow! These past six weeks have flown by in the blink of an eye. They do say time flies when you’re having fun, and this experience in London has provided me with so much more than just that. I’ve gained experience in marketing, global business, self-discovery, and exploring new cultures that I’ll value and carry with me for the rest of my life.
This was my first experience interning in a real business setting, and it was definitely eye opening for what to expect and strive for in the rest of my career journey. Having real career experience in digital marketing confirmed my passion for my major and that I can see myself working in this field for my future career endeavors. It also helped me properly organize my time in accomplishing tasks throughout a 9-5 structured workday. I also was able to experiment with and learn new tools in content creation and discover my strengths and weaknesses within them.
Being in a global city such as London also helped me reaffirm my independence and ability to take care of myself. Reflecting on my time, I’m very proud of my ability to responsibly navigate a completely new city to me and create a new daily routine to optimize my time and capabilities. I was also able to discover what aspects about living in a global city I enjoyed, struggled with, and want to keep in mind for the future in deciding what kind of atmosphere I’d like to live in.
Along with the concrete skills in business and digital marketing, I also developed several soft skills during my internship that can be transferrable to future marketing roles, my part time jobs, and in day-to-day life. The soft skill I was truly able to develop and improve upon during my time in London is creativity and innovative thinking. Stepping into my internship at Setax, I was given almost a blank slate of their struggling social channels and how I could improve them to increase brand awareness. This thought was a bit daunting at first, but I was able to foster and grow my creative skills by experimenting with new designs and testing them through trial and error. This forced me to be innovative in how we marketed the company, and I was able to improve upon our performance and identify what methods worked best within our creative experimentation. My now strengthened skills in creativity and innovation can be carried with me throughout the rest of my career journey by dismantling my fear of experimentation and using my artistic skills in a way to benefit business growth.
Reflecting on my time in London, I truly can’t compare it to anything else I’ve experienced in my life. Not only was I able to develop hard and soft skills that will assist me throughout my career journey, but I was able to become self-dependent and discover new aspects about myself as a person. I am so incredibly grateful for this opportunity to develop myself both professionally and personally, and I’ll hold this experience close to my heart for the rest of my life.