Internship Assignment D

Learning objectives and work responsibilities

1.      1. Archiving

2. Excel spreadsheets

3. Handling post

      2.  The main thing I was able to get from the internship was working in an office every day, or at least two days in a row. I never really got into a routine doing the same thing every day, but just showing up and being there for a full day in consecutive days I was able to start to understand the everyday work life I’ll have in the future.

Supervisor

My supervisor and I get along, he is also the owner of the company. He would tell me what to do and explain it well enough that I was able to get the job accomplished. There wasn’t a whole lot of training that I received, but part of that is it wasn’t really worth his time to fully train me in some stuff, since I won’t be there for that long and they would be able to do it faster by just doing it themselves rather than teaching me to do it.

Co-workers

Everybody I work with is quite friendly. Nearly every morning I’ll be welcomed by a good morning or how are you sort of thing. Recently I’ve been working at the desk helping out with doing basic stuff and have been able to get to know the people working out at the desk a little bit better. It has also showed me how relaxed the office can be as randomly, people will just stop doing their work and start talking just to talk and have some fun.

Myself

1.      I really didn’t need a whole lot of academic preparation for my internship. Most of the stuff I ended up doing was common sense, but it did help having a little accounting background for some of the stuff I did while I was at the desk. I think more than academic preparation was the way my brain works and how I analyze things automatically, especially for when I was working on spreadsheets and was able to analyze it without being told to.

2.      I did what I was supposed to in a faster amount of time than was expected. Multiple times I was told I worked too fast, but I still got done what they wanted how they wanted it. I think the main reason for this is that they were starting to run out of stuff they wanted me to do.

3.      The experience has allowed me to understand what it’s like to work every day for a full day. It has also helped me to be more efficient in what I’m doing and to pay attention to the small details that make something look a little bit nicer or a little bit easier to read or understand for others.

Central College’s Program Organisation

1.      The application process was smooth for me, I didn’t have any problems with it and thought it went well

2.      It was nice being able to say, this is what I want to accomplish this semester, and then be able to reflect on it and look back at what really did happen.

3.      I thought the staff did a nice job in every way,

4.      I would suggest to be prepared to do the work that the people that actually work there don’t want to do, and to also be ready to make some cups of tea.

The biggest project I did, was archiving the client files. I had to go through boxes of files and write down the files that were in them then go and put the files on a spreadsheet so that if an adviser needed the file they could go into the spreadsheet and type in the number and be able to find what box the file they need is in. I also had to combine lists from past years into one list so all the files they have are on the same spreadsheet rather than each year having its own spreadsheet. I also made many different spreadsheets where I needed to be able to create formulas to find a final figure for various things.

The company seemed to be pretty relaxed at the start of it for me, but as time went on I could sense some tension and some dissatisfaction throughout the company, but people were still able to enjoy it for the most part.

As long as you work hard and listen and are able to do what you are told, you would be fine for this position. They are all quite understanding that you might not have a financial advising background and if you ask, they will help you out with it. So I guess being able to ask for help if you need it is a skill that shouldn’t be looked past. My advice would be to just work hard and show up for work every day and do your best and you’ll be just fine.

Assignment 5- East End

The east end of London is very diverse. It is also the main location for the majority of the Indian population. It is not one of the places you would call the nicest parts of London, as back in the day it was one of the poor locations of London and if you had money, you wouldn’t live there. The overall appearance of the east end and central London, where we live, is drastically different as well. In central London there are several tall buildings, and the normal size for a building would be over six stories I’d say, but in the east end, there aren’t the tall buildings and most of them are maybe two or three stories.

The part I enjoyed most about this walk, was Brick Lane. Brick Lane is something that I have never experienced before, but it was fun to walk through. The street is lined with different restaurants and pubs, most of them serving Indian food of some sort. Just standing at the end of the street, you could see somebody standing outside the door of nearly every establishment, which at first seemed a bit strange as you don’t see that in the states too often. Moving down the street, those people standing outside the establishments would start trying to get you to come inside and get food there by offering different deals like fifty percent off food or three free pints. There were even times when people standing outside another establishment would start yelling at you from across the street as you were talking to another person shouting out their offer to you trying to get you away from them and to come over to theirs. They were quite competitive people, and seemed as if everybody was offering some number of free pints to Americans walking down the street.

Eventually I got to the actual market on Brick Lane and really enjoyed that. Everything smelled so good. The opening of it was full of different food stands, once again mostly of the Indian variety. I ended up getting a pancake, but it’s different from a pancake in the states. It was definitely a sweeter kind of food with nutella and bananas on the inside of it. It was well worth the purchase. Once getting past all of the food stands, there were stands selling everything from clothing to jewelry. That part wasn’t as interesting to me as the food part, but it was still fun to walk through and see the different things that were being sold. After going through Brick Lane, we found a nice little pub and just sat down and relaxed for a while. There aren’t too many pubs in the area, which is another difference from the center of London as there are pubs everywhere, sometimes a couple on the same block.

Assignment 9- Reflection

It’s hard to put my experience studying abroad in words. It was definitely one of the greatest experiences I’ve had in my life, and am very glad I took the opportunity to study abroad. I have proven to myself that I am able to live in a big city without knowing anybody, as I came without having any friends on the program, and will leave with good friends I never would have met without studying in London. I have also surprisingly been able to cook at least a little bit and been able to survive off of it, which was in question to start. I was also able to convince myself that I am able to adapt and change to the environment I am put into by coming from a small town and always being in small towns, but being in a large city, I was able to survive and get around by public transportation and not just driving around by myself everywhere. The main skill I have developed is my cooking skills, as it was at nothing before I came and now it has at least improved a little bit and if I absolutely had to cook for myself for the rest of my life I wouldn’t die of starvation. I was also able to improve my skills in an office as I was working in an office eight hours a day, two days a week. I learned how to clean up excel spreadsheets and make them easily understood for people who would have no idea what was going on in the spreadsheet.

I want to be able to share how different London is from any place in the United States for those who have not had the opportunity to go abroad. The diversity of London is something that cannot be matched in small town Iowa, or any part of Iowa for that matter. Another thing that would be nice to be able to tell people about is the buildings and how old they are, but there is no way that you can understand what London or the UK is like without actually being there and seeing the buildings that have been there for hundreds of years, longer than the United States has been a country. The fact that they have such old buildings is one of the things that first amazed me when I got here, and is still one of the things I can’t get over when I see the buildings that have been around for so long.

Advice I would give future London study abroad students is to go out and walk around instead of taking the tube everywhere. Going out and walking you can see so much more of the city and you will actually get to know your way around instead of just being underground and not seeing anything other than darkness. I would also suggest setting up travel plans right away and booking flights and trains right away and not waiting till halfway through the semester to start traveling so you will be able to see and do more things throughout. 

Assignment 8- Villages of London

I went to the village of Hampstead and the first thing I did was went to a pub to get some food. It was relatively cheap compared to what the same meal would have been in London. I went with somebody else and we got a rack of ribs and lo mein and split it between the two of us. It was one of the best meals I had eaten up to that point. After eating, we went on walking around to the church and to the graveyard. The graveyard was not what I was expecting and was different from graveyards in the United States. There was grass and greenery overgrowing everywhere making it look like it wasn’t taken care of to me. The graves were also much older and were worn down from being exposed to the elements for so long. Most of the graves were so old and so worn that the writing on them were not able to be read unless you got really close and maybe cleaned it off a little bit, then there were others that were completely worn down and there was no hope in reading it. While walking around the graveyard, there were a couple people sitting on a bench in drinking beer, whether it’s legal or not, I’m not sure, but it took me by surprise. In the states, people walk around graveyards for exercise, but normally you don’t see people just sitting around drinking and hanging out.

There were a lot of decently sized houses throughout the village, which was completely different from central London where there might be some flats. Another thing I noticed is how old the people were there normally. There weren’t too many college aged students walking around, but lots of older people that have an established job and have lots of money. I looked at some of the houses that were for sale and there were some for sale for over 300,000 pounds, which seemed crazy for such small houses. The houses were designed differently from what I’m used to as well. They weren’t just small houses, they seemed like they were fancier small houses that would be found in a richer part of a city. There wasn’t really a run-down part of town that I saw, most of it was pretty nice overall and somewhere I could see myself living eventually in life once I got the money for it. I also thought the people seemed to be nicer and more outgoing in Hampstead compared to central London where everybody just keeps to themselves and doesn’t say anything to anybody.

Assignment 7- Imperial War Museum

The first sight of the Imperial War Museum was big cannons sitting outside the building that were over 20 feet long. I can’t imagine trying to operate and aim something that large, and they were real guns that were used in wars in the past. Walking inside there were planes and rockets and tanks all over on the floor. The main piece that really interested me was the V2 rocket. The overall size of it is astonishing. Something that big full of explosives could do a lot of damage. Another small exhibit that caught my eye was the 9-11 exhibit. They had a piece of metal from one of the towers on display and they also had a video running that lasted over 15 minutes and all it had was pictures of the destruction from the planes hitting the towers. There was also a board with information regarding the attacks.

The majority of the time I was in the Imperial War Museum I went through the Holocaust exhibition. It wasn’t exactly the most enjoyable exhibit to go through, but I’m glad I went through it. There were a lot of short videos that explained things in detail. One thing I didn’t realize is that there was a period of a couple months where Hitler put in effect new laws at least one new one each week, if not more. That’s a lot to put into action in a short amount of time. There were some which were passed in consecutive days. Another thing that caught my eye was the model of a concentration camp. It wasn’t the entire camp, but had most of the buildings that were there, just not the duplicates. Around the model, there were stories and explanations of the different buildings and what they were used for. It said how people were brought in and the conditions the people would be in once they got off the trains. They were convinced they were going to get to take a shower and be clean and see family again once they got off, but in reality they were done for. There was also a model train car, which showed how big the cars would have been back in the day and that there were people stuffed in so tightly that there was no room for anybody to sit down and just a bucket for their waste which would fill up quickly and cause the car to smell bad. There were diseases started and spread throughout as well being in such close contact with so many people with no way to clean up and get away. It’s not something anybody should be proud about putting people through in the case of Hitler. It was quite impressive how he was able to get so many people to back him and his plan for creating the perfect Germany with all the “flaws” out of the way.

Assignment 4- Organisation

The organisation I joined is part of Hillsong Church, and is called a connect group. Basically what it is, is a group of people aged between the age of 18 and 25 get together and have a lesson of some sort. I got involved by just going to the church and the church is really big in being involved outside of just Sunday services, so somebody came up to me and asked what I usually do on Wednesday nights and invited me to join a connect group.

The group consists of people from all over, with nobody actually being from London. There are people from Naples, Germany, Australia, and then us Americans among other locations. We usually meet up in Café Nero about 20 minutes away from where I live in the center of London, but we have also met in one of our leaders’ friends house for a guys night because the girls in the church had a special night with just them, and also had a big meeting with other groups in a bar/club type atmosphere and just hung out for the night. When we meet in the café, we will start by just talking and having a cup of coffee or something then we will start into a lesson the leader has prepared for the night. It is discussion based, which is nice because the classes we take aren’t exactly discussion based, so it’s nice to have something a little more like I’m used to in the states.

I’ve met a young man named Jamey, who has a lot of energy and is very entertaining. I talked to him for over an hour one night just talking about basically the United States and his experiences there. His favorite part is American candy, with nerds rope being his favorite. He said him and his friends were driving across America and it was his turn to drive in the middle of the night and he had a nerds rope and was wired for the rest of the night.

One thing that being in the group has made me realize is that although people in Britain are generally reserved and don’t talk much, there are some people and some groups that will go out of their way to talk to strangers and introduce themselves to you. When they find out you’re from America, they get all excited and ask questions about different things and what we thing about Obama and all the things like politics that I’m not too into, and they end up knowing more about American politics than I do myself. 

Assignment 3- Interview

I interviewed a man named Thiala. He is one of the guards at the barracks down the road and all he does all day is let people in and out of the barracks. He said he’s old and slow so that’s where they put him, although he really didn’t appear to be that old. He is an only child and is from Nepal. The reason he came to the UK is because it’s tradition there to come to the UK and join the army. He has one son named Sean, which at first he called him a kid but then changed his wording to a young man and said he’s 19, like around my age. The role of religion in his life is minor and he said that is the normal to most British families in his belief. He doesn’t attend church regularly or anything like that.

When talking about identity, he said to him being British means you are English. He said if you are English then you are British. He said one of the UK’s weaknesses is that teenagers aren’t controlled by their parents and they can cause some trouble. He thinks parents in the UK need to be tighter with their kids so that they will behave better in the long run. I asked him how he views the UK’s relationship with the US and he said it was good. He then went on and said a bunch of things he liked about the US and different places he’s been. His favorite parts of the US are the culture and the line dances. He really liked the line dances when he went to the states years ago. He really enjoyed Florida because it was warm and nice there. He also told me about when he was in the active army and they were in Canada and had to walk a lot in the cold. His hands and feet were always cold, and he was also there in the winter, so that doesn’t help the matter of being cold much.

He also talked about in the US how he believes if you can speak Spanish and English, you can communicate with almost anybody. His reasoning is that most of the countries to the south of the states are Spanish speaking, and he thinks a lot of them come up to the US so therefor, if you can speak Spanish as well, you’ll be able to communicate with almost everyone. I’m not so sure his logic is right, since there are different languages spoken throughout the United States, like there is here in London alone, where there are over 150 languages spoken alone. It probably isn’t to the same extent in the states as it is here, but there are still more languages spoken than just English and Spanish. It was interesting to hear his insight on things, particularly on the US and how he views it and what he likes about it.