The Internship Experience in Covid-19 Times | Part 1
It all begins in the weirdly warm December 2020. Covid 19 is incredibly prominent all over the world, and has been forcing millions, if not billions of people at home. December 2020 is also the month of a hopeful change happening all over the world. It's the hope of an effective vaccine being released and shipped to every Nation, to combat the invisible common enemy and begin the transition back to a life which resembles what life used to be, until some months prior. The 'normal' life made of social interactions, face-to-face university lessons, huge traffic jams at peak hours in the morning and evening, offices and restaurants packed with people during weekends.
I am a third-year university student, in December 2020. University is not the same, at that point in time. Not only for me, but for every student on planet Earth. Schools have not been the same for almost one year by then. Everything takes place remotely, and I spend the wide majority of my time in front of a laptop, on a safe and comfortable chair, with internet access and a dim winter light gently passing through the window behind my back. This has become normality. No more public transports to reach the university building. No more nerve-wrecking exams in a claustrophobic room with numerous other students. It has been the time of Webex meetings and exams. The time of silence and reflections and last-minute connections to the virtual lesson room.
December is also the time of the Erasmus Traineeship call for applications, at my university. The Erasmus Traineeship is a European scholarship whose winners get access to an internship in some organization in a European Country, while benefitting from a financial aid. This sounded like a very interesting opportunity to me. So I decided to apply. The application process required a Transcript of exams grades, with a weighted average equal to or greater than 26/30, a Motivation letter explaining why the selection committee should have chosen you, and a formal document including some background information and personal data to be filled in, signed, and submitted.
It was mid-December when I applied. The next step of the process would have been a 15-minute interview, which took place remotely, 5 days following the application deadline. My interview turn was scheduled for a Saturday afternoon. The time allocated to it: 15 minutes. I enter the Webex room 10 minutes before the scheduled time. But that was not supposed to happen, as there is another student being interviewed at that exact time. So, I get kicked out and told to come back in 10 minutes, at the exact time of the interview. I apologize and leave.
After 10 minutes, at 4:30 pm, I re-enter the room, decently-groomed and with my phone acting as the Webcam, balanced on top of a big pile of books, slightly taller than the laptop they are behind of. Books are always useful in these scenarios. There are two kind-hearted British women on the other side of the screen. One asks questions, while the other takes notes on my answers. The tone and type of questions are similar to those you may face at a "typical" job interview nowadays. "Are you a leader?" "What are your best qualities?" "Would you be available to work from home?" This last question is a unique one. It's one of those questions that can only exist given the paradigm shift in knowledge workers' life over the past year or so. It's the kind of question which would not have been asked at a job interview during the Spanish flu pandemic in the aftermath of World War 2. It's the kind of question which only exists due to the incredible technological advancement we have been witnessing in the last decade, and which has been exacerbated by SARS-COV-2.
The 15-minute selection interview goes pretty smooth, and I feel calm, focused, confident in what I say and how I say it. The selection rankings come out some days following the interview, two days before Christmas. My student number appears in the ranking. I have been selected for the Erasmus Traineeship Scholarship. This is the beginning point.