Before I started at Provencelia, I had this picture in my head of how internship work would go. Someone hands you a task, explains exactly what they need, and you go do it. Now that I’ve wrapped up my second week, I’ve learned that work in practice almost never shows up that cleanly. Most of what I do involves figuring out what’s actually being asked before I can even start solving it, and getting comfortable with that gap has been one of the biggest lessons of this internship so far.
Provencelia is a Provence-inspired e-commerce brand that sells luxury planters and oversized decorative pots across several European markets, mostly Germany, France, and the Czech Republic. I knew coming in that I’d be helping with their financial platform project, which is the work I was most excited about. It involves helping pull the company’s numbers into a single, clear, real-time view rather than scattering them across different places. They ended up adding social media to my plate too, since I have experience in that area, but the financial side is where most of my time and energy go. It’s the kind of work I want to do long-term, and it’s also where I run into the most ambiguity.
The uncertainty usually doesn’t come from the task being hard. My supervisors know exactly what they want the end result to look like. The gap is that they aren’t always specific about how to get there, so it’s on me to figure out the path and deliver exactly what they had in mind. They’re sharp and move fast, and a lot of the time a task comes to me in general terms rather than as a detailed brief. Early on, I’d take the general direction and run with it, building out a full version before checking back in. That worked, but I realized I could be more efficient. Sometimes I’d put together something solid and then learn they’d pictured it a little differently, which meant adjusting after the fact instead of nailing it the first time. So I shifted my approach to confirm the direction earlier, before investing fully in one version.
What’s made the biggest difference is changing how often I check in. We communicate constantly over WhatsApp, and I’ve gotten into the habit of sending updates roughly every hour. At first I worried that was annoying, like I was bothering them with small stuff. But it turned out to be the opposite. Those quick check-ins are exactly how we stay on the same page. Instead of disappearing for half a day and hoping I read the assignment right, I’ll send a quick note: here’s what I’m working on, here’s the assumption I’m making, does this look right? Most of the time the answer is yes, and I keep going. When it’s no, I’ve only lost a few minutes instead of an afternoon.
I’ve also stopped treating questions as something to avoid. There’s a version of being an intern where you think asking too much makes you look like you don’t know what you’re doing. I’ve found the opposite is true here. Asking a lot of specific questions early on keeps me from building the wrong thing and signals that I actually care about getting it right rather than just getting it done. When directions are vague, the questions are the work. Narrowing “can you put the finances together” into “which markets, what time period, in what format, and who’s going to use this” is half the project.
The language barrier adds another layer to all of this. My two supervisors will sometimes talk through a problem in Czech, and one of them will turn to me and bring me up to speed in English. They’re good about looping me in, and they actually ask for my ideas, suggestions, and opinions rather than just handing down decisions. Still, when something gets worked out in Czech first, I have to ask follow-up questions to understand not just what was decided but why, so I can carry that reasoning into the next thing I build. It’s taught me to listen for the logic behind a request instead of just the request itself.
So far, I’ve finished two big tasks within the project, and I’m in the middle of a third, and I can already feel myself getting faster, not because the instructions have gotten clearer, but because I’ve gotten better at working without them being clear. I’ve started breaking vague requests into smaller pieces, confirming the pieces I’m sure about, and flagging the ones I’m not. I make my assumptions visible instead of hiding them, so if I’m wrong, it gets caught early.
What keeps coming to mind is that this is likely what the work looks like in the career I’m pursuing. I want to go into consulting and analytics, and from everything I’ve observed, those jobs are essentially professional versions of what I’m doing now: stepping into a situation where the problem hasn’t been clearly defined, and being the person who can make sense of it regardless. Clients don’t provide a clear brief, nor do fast-moving companies. Learning to operate when directions are incomplete isn’t just a supplementary skill; it’s the core of the job.
I still feel that urge to have someone tell me exactly what to do. However, I’m beginning to view ambiguity not as an obstacle to my work but as an essential part of the process worth mastering.
