Hello! It’s now week 6 of my internship here in Stockholm and I’ve been very busy this last week! In addition to working, I got the opportunity to travel to Prague this last weekend. I will talk a bit about that experience later on in the blog but I will start by discussing how my internship has been going at Boulebar and what I’ve been working on, in addition to discussing leadership.

Currently at Boulebar I’m working on a new assignment relating to systems which is a change of pace from the more traditional supply chain assignments I’ve completed thus far. I am currently going through Boulebar’s scheduling system and editing permissions and making sure that each “role” in the company has correct and appropriate amount of access and permission in the company. I personally have found this assignment to be the most difficult of all of them so far. Despite it being the most “straightforward” on paper I have found that understand which each permission means and interpreting the instructions I’ve been given is really hard and takes time to ensure that I am doing the correct thing by adding/dropping certain permissions for each role. I’ve had to ask questions to my supervisor to make sure I’m on the right track but so far I’m making decent headway with that assignment!

As far as leadership I would say I have a democratic and transactional style of leadership, meaning I am a supportive and innovative leader that is also very performance focused. I feel as if my internship hasn’t necessarily challenged my view on leadership. I understand that different mixes and styles of leadership can be effective in their own ways and I haven’t found that my leadership mix is any less effective than when I started this program. It’s important to note as well that I am an intern and my ability to show leadership at my work, especially when the office has now essentially cleared out for the summer have been limited. However, I have observed personal growth and exercising the ability to push myself towards progress and high performance in this internship. I think that having this internship experience is really contributing to my future leadership ability as this is really giving me confidence in many aspects of a work environment and what to expect for future internships/jobs in my life. Before this program, the only work I’ve done are summer jobs which are very different than the type of jobs I will be working in in my career. This experience has given me the opportunity to familiarise myself with a work environment and learn some social and professional norms in a Swedish context.

To touch on the Swedish aspect of this internship, I feel as if this internship will further boost my confidence and knowledge with different work cultures, specifically European culture. I believe this will give me specific and unique insight and ability to lead others in future work environments to introduce people to positive aspects of Swedish work culture I’ve observed here and believe would work and benefit future companies I work for. I’ve already talked about some of the benefits I’ve observed so I won’t go into specifics because I would just be repeating myself from former blog posts but I believe there are many unique aspects that would be beneficial in most work environments.

Now I will talk about my experience in Prague over this last weekend! I had known previously to coming to Stockholm that I would visit Prague during my experience here. My good friend from high school has been interning in a smaller Czech city and we agreed to meet up in Prague for a weekend. I took a direct flight from Stockholm (which was very nice after all of the long train rides I’ve been on when traveling thus far). We were able to really optimise our time in Prague visiting all of the essential and historical locations in the city and even doing a 2.5 hour free walking tour that really gave us a whole new outlook on the city having a really amazing and unforgettable tour guide who is connected heavily to the city of Prague through his family. We walked around the whole city learning about the history and significance of many of the buildings that are located throughout the city. Some of the most notable destinations we visited were, the Astronomical Clock, a very intricate clock located literally in the middle of the city. Very interesting design although the hourly chiming was admittedly underwhelming, it reminded me a lot of the clock in Munich, Germany which gathers ridiculously large crowds every hour just to see it chime. We also got to visit Prague castle, the largest ancient castle complex in the world. We walked all the way to the top of the castle and got a great view point of the entire city. Overall, we had a really great experience in Prague and I would love to go back one day as it genuinely was one of the coolest cities I’ve ever been to.

Thank you for reading as always! I am back in Stockholm and looking forward to the week ahead so I can continue to explore this great city and have more unforgettable memories here!