Express yourself!

Thanks to a friend, I came across this little gem today:

I think that makes for a brilliant little lesson there. I've been experiencing some trouble with self expression lately, be it on a very different subject: job applications. There are loads of great tips for cv and cover letter writing to be found online (check out The Guardian Careers, GoThinkBig, and BBC Careers), but in the end a lot of them come down to: be honest, express that you are passionate and motivated, and it'll be fine. 

Now that's exactly what's so difficult when applying, I can tell you. When I'm writing about any subject that interests me, I think I'm reasonably good at bringing my point across in a way that captivates people. However, when writing for a job application, with specific questions to answer, a way-too-low word limit, and my English that needs to be perfect, it's just not that easy. There are so many things you need to take into account and so many doubts keep popping up in your head, because there's quite a lot at stake. It's easy to let all that paralyse you. 

So I'll try a new strategy today: write as if I'm defending a super important point I've been trying to make for ages, and ignore word limit and style. Then edit afterwards. And worry less, most of all. In the end you can only do your best! (All sing with me: And the moooost you can eeeever doooo, is the beeest you caaaaan. Oohooh.) We'll see how it goes!

PS. If you need a bit of instant happiness: listen to the song I nicked the title from for this post! Doot-doot-do-do-doot!

Easy does it

So, the decision had been made, I had come back home, and exams had just begun. The plan was to do a paid but irrelevant summer job (going on an Erasmus is not good for the funds, believe me) while looking out for relevant internships and placements starting from September. But first of all there were exams and a final paper to be completed. I was not on the lookout yet at all.

Plans about what to apply for were quite vague; I knew I would like to try something in media or journalism, and possibly also in a cultural sector. I knew I would love to find something abroad again, preferably in the UK or Ireland. My expectations, I think, were realistic: I expected the process of applying to be long and stressful, even more so because I'd never applied for a job before - except for some student jobs, but that can hardly be called applying at all. I believed it would be very hard to find a job in the fields I was aiming at, since they are notoriously popular and usually pretty saturated. And I predicted that I would probably not get paid for the kind of jobs that really interested me.

I was wrong on most points.

By mere chance, I stumbled upon an ad on my university website for an internship at La Monnaie Opera House in Brussels. The internship was at the Promotion & Communication department, it was unpaid (at least I was right about that part) and three-month-long starting from September. It seemed like a perfect opportunity, in short. I did not hesitate long and started working on an application (even though I still had a couple of exams to get through; the opera house would close over the summer holidays, and it was mid-June by this time).

Although I put quite some effort into it, looking back I would say I was not very well prepared - my CV, for one, was a little messy (no wonder, there was nothing very interesting to put on it except for the likely prospect of a BA degree), and my cover letter was written purely on intuition. (I can see that now, having just spent quite a while researching CV's and cover letters.)

But I just went ahead and applied anyway. I had a lot of excitement and little to lose; and apparently, sometimes that's enough.