On the bad side...
Courses
- Our Perspectives on Experiential Learning Abroad (PELA) class, which is supposed to support us in our internship and help us gain insight into the Australian workplace, turned out to be very redundant. As others in the program realized that PELA was not important to them, they started not participating, carrying on side conversations, and overall just making the class even more useless.
- The political science course is very long! But seeing as it is a 6 week course, it makes sense that the class meets for 3 hours twice a week.
- Finance is a tough field for interns to enter because to do most of the highest level work, you need real experience that extends beyond introductory courses and extracurricular activities. Since finance is already a tough field, the best internships are with companies that have a specific procedure for interns. My original placement site didn't have one in place.
- In my last blog I spoke about my optimism and my hopes to be given more worthwhile tasks; unfortunately, that optimism died and I realized that my old site would not be able to provide me with the experience I had hoped for. Two other Finance interns had similar troubles.
- TWC's partner abroad was unable to immediately respond to our internship problems. They have a strict procedure and timeframe for acting on problems with internships; however, we have only limited time left here in Australia and we felt that a switch should have been made more quickly.
- In my opinion, a lot of the problems that some of us have faced at our internship sites could have easily been avoided if more research had been done on the companies we were placed in.
- The effects of the U.S. economic downturn are present here in Australia. The fluctuations in the exchange rate make it very difficult to exchange money because you are always in search of the best rate.
- The cost of living is high in Sydney. Yes, it is manageable and not as expensive as LONDON (sorry London TWCers) but I find myself going through money pretty quickly here, and I am a very frugal person, so it is saying a lot to say I spent money.
- Time goes by way too quickly! We only have just under 3 weeks left!
Okay, optimists, you can read easy from now on. The bad is over and there is a lot of good to come!
On the good side...Classes
- There is only 1 week of PELA left (since we have class only 6 of the 8 weeks we're here), which clears up our last two Thursdays in Australia!!
- We are going on a field trip!! Our academic course professor was given money for us to go and see the Hyde Park Barracks and to sip tea at the Parliament House.
- Although we thought TWC's partner was slow to respond to our troubles, they did come through in the end and they have found new placements for all three of us finance interns who had complaints.
- The other eight interns have really enjoyed their placements. Some of them have been given opportunities to do exciting work! For example, Dan is getting to write horoscopes and short pieces for the tourism magazine he works for. Sonia is working on one of Greenpeace’s major campaigns.
- TWC's partner abroad listened to our problems and decided to make some changes.
- They had us fill out some surveys and they really seem like they are going to make changes. We are the pilot group, so bumps in the road are expected, but I am sure next year will be much better.
- I have only become more frugal so in the long run I will save more money!
- Time only goes by fast when you are having fun… so it’s clear we are having fun!!
Hooroo!!
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