[#RDInternships] Fear of the Unknown: A Story of My First Internship

Fear of the Unknown: A Story of My First Internship

• Practical experience, such as an internship, is essential for discovering professional interests and for clarifying career direction.
• Overcoming fear and getting out of the comfort zone contributes to integration into a professional environment and the development of confidence in one's own abilities.
• Building collaborative relationships and actively engaging in diverse tasks allow the development of skills, the discovery of passions and the increase of professional satisfaction.

The first step in your career: the internship experience

I finished sociology. I did not then enroll in a master's, because I still had doubts about the path I would like to take. I still have them, they are natural at my age. But how else can you find out what you like, if not actually doing something? This is how I got to my first internship, and after 4 months I can say that the first job is not the dragon I imagined.

Facing Fear and Integrating Into a Communication Agency Environment

I was terribly scared to start, I was afraid of a new collective, of new colleagues, of an environment to which I felt completely alien. And with these fears, I was also feeling the pressure to start my adult life. My introverted disposition did not help me much either.

But I was given the opportunity to start an internship here, an opportunity vis-a-vis which I am very grateful for. I was always told to get out of my comfort zone, to try new things, even if I was scared. You know the saying, “This is how we evolve.”

On a rational level I totally agree with the saying, but every time I ran into it it awakened in me a cognitive dissonance that I had to justify the thoughts that were holding me in place. Why did I start to feel more and more depressed?

Because I felt that I was not doing anything with my life, because I kept hearing from my own that I also had to enter the ranks of adults, to get hired somewhere, to have my own money. Why did I run away from employment? And now we return to fear again; a rather toxic cycle, from which I am immensely glad to have come out.

Development of skills in PR

The fear of a toxic work environment disappeared when I met my colleagues, some of whom even became my friends in a fairly short time, I say.

The fear related to ignorance, to make mistakes or to feel alienated has also disappeared. Many things were foreign to me, coming from a completely different field, but I always felt encouraged to ask questions, and believe me, I did it quite often and still do.

It started as an exercise, today some posts, tomorrow some more complex texts, in which little by little I began to leave my mark. And it's a very sympathetic feeling. I also met with older passions, because PR work involves a lot of reasearch.

One thing that was never comfortable for me, however, was to say my perspective out loud, to make myself heard, to be able to add value with my ideas.

That's what I'm trying to learn now, guided and encouraged by the colleagues I work with. Baby steps.

The joy of discovering the field of communication

Now I enjoy the experience that this internship offers me (research, creativity, posts, community management, events, etc.). I try to think less about my actual purpose and more about the things that bring me pleasure to the work I do now. Even the smallest pleasure, from the smallest part of a task.

Arina, 23 years old, graduated from the Faculty of Sociology and Social Work, University of Bucharest

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