Back in my hometown, I am extremely grateful to have made it here safe and surrounded by family. Despite this, I am mourning the fact that Bondi beach isn’t a bus ride away, that I can no longer tell people that I am a journalist, and that this experience in Australia has come to an end.
Reflecting on this program, I have no doubt that I have learned so much, from simply traveling with people I’m unfamiliar with to gaining interpersonal, life-long skills. In comparison to the original goals I had set in my first post, here’s what I can conclude.
Growing my writing
This was my first and main goal because it was something important to me both personally and professionally. As I’ve mentioned previously—and as I tend to mention whenever I get the chance—I love writing, and I always have. Going into a field where writing isn’t the most prominent skill sometimes makes me feel like I am doing the wrong thing. However, in this experience and specifically with my internship, I feel “write” where I belong. In my internship, I had to write 800-1000 words about something I had just learned about, which is truly the best and most challenging exercise I’ve ever done.
In previous writing experiences, I had a lot more time to prepare, with a deadline being at least a few weeks into the future so that I could develop a narrative I was comfortable building off of. However, my job had me juggling multiple tasks at once, and despite the bulkiness of my work, my deadlines remained the same, often being within the same day. I was pushed to perform my best while being constrained by something I could not control.
Not only was this a lesson in writing, but it was also a lesson on work and life: there’ll be times in my future career where I have no control over my external environment, my deadlines, or something else, but my performance needs to be the same.
Maintain at least three connections
As I said when I initially set this goal, traveling is the perfect opportunity to meet new people because you are consistently surrounded by the unfamiliar. I certainly met a lot of people, and I’m proud to say that I am still in contact with more than my goal of three.
To speak on a few of them, I’ll start with my internship supervisor, who I am grateful to have as someone I can reach out to with questions. We have been in contact recently as she told me she’ll send me AusBiz’s most recent magazine, in which some of my work is being published! Another person is an Australian friend I met. I expressed that I am interested in living in Sydney, or at least coming back, and he might be moving to New York for work. Either way, we’d be helpful to each other in the future, so we’ve agreed to keep in contact. A third example is a fellow student I met through the program. We’ve discussed visiting each other in the coming year, which is something I am definitely looking forward to.
My connections are a mix of friends and professionals, and I’m excited to see how we could help each other out in the future!
Work-life balance
This one was challenging, but absolutely necessary. I think what made this so difficult is that I had it in my head that if I wasn’t at class or work, I needed to maximize my time by going out and doing something. In a sense, this is true; I wanted to do a lot and I needed to utilize my spare time in order to accomplish that. However, this mindset neglects the need for rest. There were a few times where I felt like experiences were ruined by my mood because I had pushed myself to do more than I could handle. The only thing I regret from this trip is not allowing myself to rest more, by taking the time to breathe and recoup before setting out for another adventure. Understanding this has helped me to navigate work-life balance, knowing that it’s not just about doing everything, but also listening to my body and knowing when I need to step back and absorb rather than push through blindly.
One other thing I learned in this sense has actually helped me with my study habits, and that is breaking down studying incrementally. My previous mindset has been that I need to allot a chunk of time in order to concentrate, but I’ve found that splitting my study sessions has helped me to focus more and actually perform better. I learned this the hard way: my midterm exam, I waited to study because I was traveling over the weekend and didn’t think I had enough time. I ended up doing poorly on the exam. For the final exam, I prepared by studying for the days leading up to it, using up an hour where I could to do a section at a time. I ended up doing significantly better, and I got to do more on each day rather than cramming all in one night and sitting with my stress. This is certainly a habit I will use this coming semester.
Additional skills and lessons
Beyond what I learned under these three goals, I also developed additional soft skills that have already proven useful.
Being proactive
One skill I think I had previously but have developed further is being proactive. In all of my work experience, from serving tables to being an intern for AusBiz, I find myself naturally proactive because I like to stay ahead of potential complications. However, in my work, I recognized how important it was to not only accomplish what was asked of me, but to try to predict what was next based on previous workflow.
By doing this, I kept productivity up by being able to continue working if my supervisor wasn’t available to give me my next steps. If I was ever incorrect, it was a simple redirection to a different task, which was appreciated more than me not doing anything at all. Chances are, the task I had started was something I would need to do eventually, so it prepped me for the future.
Beyond a professional environment, being proactive also helped me in my travels. When doing quick weekend trips, it can be difficult to predict what could happen because it’s such a quick turnaround between a weekly routine, the trip, and coming back. With this, it was crucial that I prepared myself with packing, deadlines, potential mishaps, etc. to ensure I was on top of everything.
In my future, I know that being proactive will be helpful to my employers, showing that I am both reliable and eager to do complete my job. At Pitt Business, I think this will help me specifically in my role as president of Phi Chi Theta, because being proactive is necessary in a leadership position.
Being a goal-setter
As I mentioned, being proactive isn’t new to me, rather a skill that’s been both further developed and become apparent to me as a critical skill. A new skill I’ve learned is goal-setting. I am not saying I’ve never set a goal before, but traditionally I set long-term goals rather than day-to-day ones. Usually, I have a running to-do list, and I’m good at remembering the deadlines and estimating when I should complete the items on the list. In the long-term, I know what I am working towards and what I should do to make that happen. But day-to-day? I tend to feel around until I know what should be done.
In my internship, I was told what to do and when to do it, meaning I was following a direction without much room to reflect on the experience itself. Obviously, this is not much different from any other experience, but in terms of recognizing my personal growth throughout this journey, the only way I could actually recognize what I was learning was through personal goal-setting.
Even in our global internship course we took with our host program, CEA CAPA, I found that sometimes the goals they set were misaligned with my personal trajectory. To actually extract what I gained, I needed to set small goals for myself each day, with small questions to consider: Where did I feel confident today? Where do I think I failed? Did I push myself enough or too much? Questions like this help me to follow-up on goals I set. An example of a goal would be to push past writer’s block, even if the output isn’t great. Or, beyond the professional environment, to listen more actively when meeting new people, since I tended to get talk more the more excited I got.
My final reflection: moving from a fixed mindset
Skills like these help make me more rounded as a professional and as someone who is in a stage of life where I am meeting so many people and experiencing so many new things. Overall, I think this experience helped me to understand myself, not in a way that I am learning who I am, but I’m learning how to detach from the idea of myself. One thing I struggle with is constraining to who I think I am: if I say I’m a finance major, I better seem interested in finance in everything I do. Or if I say I like to write, I better show people I’m writing to prove it. Even with my personality, I feel that if I say I am a confident person, I have to prove that I’m confident in every scenario.
Realistically, this isn’t possible. It doesn’t make sense to be restricted to a person I’ve decided I am, especially considering that I am still developing who that person is. Being in a new environment, surrounded by unfamiliar faces and practices, made me hyperaware of how I’m used to acting. In some ways, I felt I had a maturity that made it easy for me to navigate the new. In others, I became conscious of my flaws, feeling knocked down by the fact that I was not equipped with the skills I needed.
If I stayed in the mindset that I couldn’t deter from who I believe I am, I would’ve achieved no growth. For example, I believed that I am a humble person because taking accountability is a huge part of my personal philosophy. However, interacting with new people, I caught myself defending myself when I should’ve admitted fault or even boasting about something I am actually insecure about. I don’t think these actions completely disregard any humble behavior I exhibited previously, but it certainly made me more aware of how I present myself to new people, and especially to a new culture.
This may not seem specific to this study abroad experience, but I think being in Sydney and doing the things I did drew this realization out of me, allowing me to confront it head-on. I don’t think I solved all of my flaws, but I do think that beyond the new skills I learned or the old skills I developed, I learned a lot about myself. When it comes to applying and interviewing for internships for next summer, understanding myself is crucial so that I can market myself properly. I not only know the strengths to present, but I also know the weaknesses to work on before I enter a different professional environment.
I am so grateful for my time in Sydney, and frankly I’m in denial that I am looking back on it rather than living through it. As I mentioned in this reflection, I am considering moving to Sydney in the future, and I hope that is a possibility for me. Regardless, I will surely return to Australia and will forever cherish what this country gave me.