I think this experience interning for European Values helped me immensely figure out what my strengths and weaknesses are and helped me level out my self-concept of myself. Using the NACE framework, it helps me develop a clear understanding of everything that I have learned, gained and what I still need to improve on.
Strengths:
Critical Thinking/Problem Solving: I believe that “critical thinking and problem solving” has always been one of my greatest strengths (NACE). Even when I was younger, reading/writing/analysis has always been my strong suit compared to science and math. I’ve been able to grow this strength by focusing my major on policy studies which is basically just a major that is focused on finding solutions to problems in society. This is an important skill highlighted in the article “What are problem solving skills and why are they important?”, and it talks about how implementing solutions is a critical part of problem solving, and I have definitely been able to enhance this skill in my time in Prague (CareerBuilder). I have been able to enhance these skills by learning different data analytics tools and finding different ways to solve problems in a social science sense. I think my time in Prague has definitely been able to help this strength to grow because I’ve been able to problem solve and adapt to different situations like having to continue my internship while in the United States instead of in Prague. I was also in an internship setting that was very independent and had a lack of instruction so how to problem solve the issues and challenges that arose by myself helped me to create different ways to critically think and solve problems. An example of this would be the assignments that they gave me and the other intern were very unclear about expectations, deadlines, and how they wanted it to be done so I and my supervisor created a document to keep track of all of it.
Global/Intercultural Fluency: I believe that this is one of my strengths and I was definitely able to expand on it during my time and internship in Prague. In my time at Syracuse, they require you to take several critical thinking and problem-solving courses and I decided since that I had to take these classes I would make them worth it by taking courses that would expand my knowledge about gender, cultures, different sexualities, etc. so that I would be better in understanding global and inter-cultural problems and relationships. During my internship and time in Prague, I was able to definitely gain more insight about different cultures and expectations of central European people. I was able to take what I know and the values that I had and be able to be open to different expectations and sensitivities of the Czech people. For example, the Czech people are definitely more secluded, refined and quieter and I had to adapt my normal behavior to fit that especially in the workplace.
Weaknesses:
Career Management: I think that one of my weaknesses that was definitely highlighted during my time in Prague was my ability to manage my career. I had a tough time articulating my expectations and wants for this internship even though I knew them. I had a tough time because I wanted to meet their expectations and make them happy instead of wanting to make myself happy and feeling fulfilled in what I wanted to do. This was definitely exacerbated when the internship was moved to remote work and I just did what they asked before and I had a tough time articulating what I wanted to work on and what I had expected to work on when we discussed it during my interview and on my first day. I was able to expand on this and create a strength out of it which is I was able to identify my skills and make my experiences known and leverage them to be able to get some of the work that I knew that I could do and be capable of. I did this by telling my boss that I have experience with grant research and research in different areas regarding security and this led to me doing more research that I wanted but not as much as I had originally wanted.
Oral/Written Communication: I think that in the traditional sense of written and oral communication I am very strong in that. I am able to write and communicate and present my ideas and thoughts in an effective and informative matter; however, moving towards an online, remote working situation I struggled deeply with communicating with my bosses because they were really difficult to get questions answered from. There is no communication platform set up in the beginning, there was an app that we use to communicate but it was really hard to message in there because there’s so many different people in there you never know who you were talking to, who to go to with your questions, or if you were going to get an answer that answered the question that you initially had. This resulted in me having to be more independent and self-aware which isn’t necessarily a bad thing but I definitely think my internship experience would’ve gone a lot smoother if I had more of a support system that I normally would’ve in the US where there were several people that I could go to with a question.
I will continue to develop these competencies in my future internships and schoolwork and this experience has allowed me to see my weaknesses and realize how I can overcome them. Specifically, my career management weakness I now know that it is okay to advocate for what you want as an intern and not just sit and accept the monotonous tasks being assigned to you that weren’t discussed during the interview, contract, or initial meetings covering your responsibilities.
Stephanie's Study Abroad Internship Blog 