Internship Report

Experience at University of the Nations in Lausanne, Switzerland

 

Hyojin Ahn (HUFS-UPEACE Dual Degree Programme)

 

My internship in the summer of 2011 in Lausanne, Switzerland was a beneficial and enriching experience as a student who is majoring the international economic development and management.

The project I was involved in was a summer communication development project run by the Lausanne Campus of University of the Nations and John Brown University (U.S.A). The project was conducted for two months, from the end of June until the end of August in 2011, in Lausanne, Switzerland. Main goals of this project were to enhance the effective communication between the potential students (applicants) and the school through renovating website and editing all the printed materials. The website renovation mainly focused on creating new designs and system into the old website. Almost 40 people from more than 6 countries worked together for this project.

My expectation for the internship was to have a working experience in my major of study with an international team under the guidance of an experienced supervisor. I was accepted to join the communication team which was mainly leading this summer project, and the job they placed me in was a perfect fit.

My main job was to translate and upload new information and editing existing printed materials in accordance with the new website information. Through this job, I could have opportunities to learn useful website building tools along with my own translation work. Besides, I could cooperate with various people from different department to collect and update information.

My main take away of this internship experience is to learn the importance of communication. Developing communication itself was our main goal of the project, but also, the effective internal communication was a very key to bring effectiveness into our working environment and progress in work. In person or online, making a clear and well-delivered communication needs a lot of thoughts and effort, yet, this is the very key to make a successful works. This is more important than how fast the work is done, because the communication can control quality and perfection in the work. One thing I have to remember is that in the centre of communication, there are people which means relationship, in other words, cooperation. Most of the work can’t be done by one or two persons, but by many people’s hands. Therefore, working together for the same goal, being like-minded should come first, and effective communication helps a lot to make this process happen-having one mind. This is what I learnt from this experience.

One difficulty that I had was to manage the workload due to the pressure of deadline because all the works were related to one another. If one webpage update was delayed, it meant the whole process could be slowed down. The only way to avoid the pressure was to focus on my assigned work until I finished it. It required me of patience and diligence more than any other skills, and sometimes, physical strength to sit down all day. However, finally, I learnt a lesson that many drops make a shower is the timeless truth. One page by one page, I could contribute to translating the whole website on time.

During my internship, I did enjoy learning by doing and I was benefited from the friendly and embracing atmosphere of the team. I believe that my co-workers’ encouragement was a part of driving force for me to take another step to go further and make progress despite my mistakes and weaknesses so that finally, I could finish well my internship period. I am especially grateful for my supervisor, Vince Licari, for his support and cheerful spirit, trusting his intern. As an intern, there can be no greater privilege to be trusted by his or her supervisor.