My Internship in Pazardjik, Bulgaria
by Matthew Osahriemen Osahenrumwen
In 2014, I decided to do an internship in Bulgaria. I contacted a lot of organization to start an application for my internship. The first step of the application process is the resume, and it was reviewed, but I was lucky to be accepted by Association Focus-European Centre for Development. Where I work in a daily centre for disabled people, and this way I have been able to improve my skills and know more about becoming a social worker and in the future if I want to work with disabled people, trust me I will do my job very well, because I have been able to gain more experience.
Internship as one of the most valuable off campus activity which students can experience just before their graduation. One of the most valuable reasons for an internship is to add some great value to one’s educational experience as university students. Talking about the educational experiences, internships help to facilitate concrete experiences that encourage the link between theory and practice and as well as bridging the gaps between the knowledge from a classroom to the outside world or environment. The internship also gives students an experimental learning opportunity to have more knowledge and skills in real a life situation, to evaluate the acceptability of a future career area, to increase their competitiveness for future employment and to develop an awareness of community, economic and social issues in a global society. In other words, it broadens our horizons in relation to our disciplines.
The internship also makes students more knowledgeable and marketable, allowing them to stand out to employers for the highly competitive jobs. The internship also trains the independent-minded students to become successful entrepreneurs. Either the students will eventually work for a company or for themselves, internship is one of the best ways to learn about the real world and labour market.
Internship programs are mostly supported by university, interns generally have a supervisor who gives them some specific tasks and evaluates the interns overall work. For internships for credit, usually a faculty sponsor will work along with the work supervisor to ensure that the necessary learning is taking place.
Anybody can go for internship; interns can be high school or college students or even adults interested in trying out a new career. Some university or college students do internships, to gain relevant experience in a particular career field, or their field of study,
Besides all the necessary skills and competencies I have achieved from the internship, I have also been able to work in an environment with multicultural cultures; I work from Turkish, Spanish, Lithuanian, French nationals etc. I have been able to integrate all the cultures etiquette and diversity together, in order to create collaboration among ourselves as human to reach a common ground.