So this is my first reflective blog post for PR393. I am currently taking part in a 4 week internship at GO Communications in Malaysia .
I am ¼ of the way through and although it has been an intense and tiring week I
have learnt some valuable lessons. Monday 9th June 2014 was our
first day in the office; we all arrived dressed in corporate wear with
nervous smiles on our faces. Georgia, Felicity, Whitney and I, sat
in the waiting room until we were called in and shown around the office to meet
our new colleagues. There were so many new faces and names to remember. We were
then shown to our very own desks; we each have our own computers and phones
(not as modern as those we are used to at home). Without delay, we were introduced to “media
monitoring”, a task we have all become very familiar with. We each have a
specific newspaper to monitor daily, but on Mondays we each have extra papers
to monitor from the weekend. GO Communications has numerous clients and the
teams within the consultancy are allocated specific clients. It is our tasks to
monitor what is being published in the newspapers and whether it is relevant to our clients. It didn’t take us long to gain an understanding of what to
look out for in the papers. This task has truly taught me the importance of
being up-to-date with what is happening in the world around us. Reading the
newspaper, in detail, on a daily basis has taught me not only about our clients
but it has helped me gain a deeper understanding of the culture we are
temporarily living in. Although media monitoring is only one of the tasks I
have done this week I feel that it has been a significant part of the week as
it is done daily and it has been a rapid way to teach us about the clients we work
with, their industries and their competitors. As we are not overly familiar
with Malaysia ,
its government and the majority of their companies we have to pay extra attention to
the details.
As stated earlier, the first week at GO Communications has
been intense and tiring but it has been a positive challenge. We work 9am to
6pm Monday to Friday and there are often evenings where I or the other interns
feel we must stay back to complete our tasks. The first week at any new job or
internship will always be a time to get used to the way their system works and
specific protocols. However, being placed in an internship in a different
country with people speaking multiple languages, being exposed to numerous
clients and publications we have never heard of is a whole new experience. It
really pushes you to become a quick learner. Having said that, the people we
work with at GO are all very welcoming and friendly which makes the settling in
period a little easier. Furthermore, when we finish our working day we do not
go home to a home-cooked meal and our families", instead Georgia and I
go the gym. The gym we signed up to is not exactly what we are used to that’s for
sure, but we make do with what we’ve have as running outside seems somewhat
dangerous with the uneven footpaths and I can’t count the amount of people who
have told me to “be careful”. After our workout, we head to One Utama, a local
shopping centre where we often have dinner and go to the supermarket to buy
breakfast cereal and yoghurt for the next day. We head home, shower and prepare
to do it all again. So in the first week of our internship we have truly been
thrown into the “real world”. No doubt, the real world here in Malaysia is nothing like how we would live in
the real world in Perth
but none-the-less we’re learning and embracing the cultural and work experiences
along the way.
Until the next update from Malaysia,
Jessie
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