After the rain

Eh. Did I say last time that I was gonna post more regularly? No? Good. Because I didn't. Yeah. Sorry.
I really need to set deadlines for myself, or start making lists, or something! I'll make that my late new year's resolution.

In my defense, it's been a really busy week. I took on a five-day temp job to earn some money. I will spare you the details (it involved a scanner and loads of invoices. Yeah.), but when I spend the whole day behind a computer, I just don't feel like turning mine on when I come home to write a blog post. (Also, with a job like that, there's really nowhere to get inspiration from, so maybe we should all be happy about that.)

Then in the weekend I went out, and my bag got stolen, yay. Then I went to the police station, they retrieved my wallet with most of my stuff but no debit/credit cards or keys, really yay. Then I had to go to the dentist. Very un-yay.

BUT there's good news too: I'm going to the UK on Monday! Yay yay yay! I managed to get myself a ticket to the BBC GetIn event in Cardiff, which is basically a big info session about the BBC Trainee Schemes and the Talent Pool. I'm very excited about that indeed! And since it seemed a bit stupid to travel all the way there (by BUS, because the Eurostar is damn expensive) to stay only one day, I'm spending the rest of the week in London. YAAAAAY! Compensates for the crappy weekend!

I'll try to do blog updates from London/Cardiff, but it's gonna be from my phone, so apologies in advance for crappy layouts and all that. If you want to follow my travelling adventures, in this case Instagram might be the best place. Find me here:  (or by the name of Mayasounds, of course).

In the meantime: still trying to finish my Work Experience application for the BBC too. It's so hard. Ugh.

Why UK?

You may wonder why exactly I've chosen to look specifically in the UK at the moment. The reasons are manifold, here are the principal ones:

1) The UK is awesome and I would love to live/work there for the rest of my life (at least I think so right now), so why waste more time in Belgium?

2) I love a change of environment every now and then. It makes me creative.

3) They do short work experience placements, which is exactly what I want right now. I haven't found anything similar in Belgium so far; it's all internships here, and they are usually long.

Can't learn as much if the placement is too short, I hear you say? Not entirely true. In my opera house internship, I learned loads in the first month, and hardly anything in the last three, because the tasks just started to repeat. That's why I'd prefer several short placements over one very long one - which only means I'm making things more difficult for myself, but hey, I'm still a woman right.

4) Any opportunity to improve my English is most welcome. I would especially like to pick up some kind of a stable accent at some point, instead of the current situation where I adapt my accent to whoever I'm talking to (which, oddly, causes Americans to think I'm Irish, Irish people in Ireland to think I'm American, Irish people abroad to think I'm Irish, and Polish people to think I'm taking the piss out of them).

5) Tea and scones. That is all.

What's next?

Happy New Year one and all! I took a bit of time off to relax after finishing my last internship, and obviously I was too lazy to even write a blog post in that time... Apologies! Here it is at last.

So what's next?
Nothing definite so far. I've been on the lookout for my next job for a while, but unfortunately I've had very little time, a lot to do, and Christmas in the way. To complicate matters a bit for myself, I've also decided to look for work in the UK this time, which means translating my CV to English and writing my cover letters in English, also pretty time consuming when you want things to be perfect.

I am mainly searching in the media business. Top of the list is - of course - the BBC. I've been keeping an eye on their opportunities for a while - they have a really interesting work experience programme, for which applications happen to open tomorrow. Of course I know I am aiming pretty high here - I estimate they receive about 8000 applications per position or thereabouts. But so be it - if you don't aim high, you can never hit high, right?

I'm also looking around for other opportunities, of course. I applied for work experience at NME magazine - something totally different, I am aware, but this whole year is about trying things, and I would really like to try both. As you have noticed, I like writing, but I also love television as a medium, and I hope I'll have a chance to explore both.

In any case, I am more and more convinced that my future lies somewhere in the media business. I especially love that balance between education and entertainment - a thing of beauty when kept well. It is important that people get informed correctly about things that go on in the world - but information goes down a lot easier when nicely packaged. I think the BBC is very good at keeping that balance most of the time. It's something I would love to be involved in. In a way, NME tries to do the same on a smaller scale, for a different public, and through a different medium. It would be interesting to be able to compare their methods.

Anyway, that's the dream scenario. Let's see how it goes! The search continues.

Fast forward

Yes, I should probably have put up a blog post neatly every week of my internship, to update you on my progress and all that, but time flies and I procrastinate, and here we are, on Christmas Eve, on my second-to-last day of work at the opera house. So I'll need to do a retrospect post instead.

Did it go well? I think it all went fairly well, even though it was probably not the best time to do an internship here (a lot of stressed people, the passing away of a superior of our service, this is not a place to go into great detail but it was not the easiest time for sure). We had our good and our bad times, the opera house and I, but that's how it goes I guess.

Did you learn a lot? Yes. I would say I learned a lot about the working world, life as a full-time employee, the way a big company and a cultural institution is organised, and what it takes to keep it running. I've seen a lot of good things, I've seen quite a few things I don't agree with, and I've seen many different reactions to all those things. I mainly gained a lot of insights through working here, and that is the most important thing I've learned. When it comes to practical skills, the actual job content, I can't say I've learned such a great deal there. I did get to improve my French and my organisational skills - but I could already write, use social media, and answer a phone before I came here. Overall, I think the insights I gained and the experience I've built are the most valuable things I will take away from La Monnaie.

Was it worth it? Yes, I think it was worth it. I am glad I got to work at La Monnaie, I got to know the opera house from the inside, I got to know Brussels, I got to know a lot of people.

Would I do it again? I would do it again with what I know now, only maybe a little shorter.

So have you found your dream job? No. I love communication, but I've found out I hate promotion. That thin line between trying to help people by offering them information, or trying to make them buy your product by throwing information at them, is one I've found I do not like to cross. Promotion gives me headaches.

And so the journey continues. Expect an update about my next job search soon!

PS. Sorry for staying vague about this whole chunk of time that's just passed. I promise I'll do better on my next job!

And so it begins

First of all, this blog comes way too late. I'm aware of that. I should have started it when I started my year-of-experiences - not five months later. Granted. I shall start it now however, if it please you.

When I was in Galway on Erasmus exchange, I was very, very happy. It took me a while to find out why exactly, but I know now: I just love new experiences. Landing in a situation where everything and everyone is new, and where you have to find your way around and discover everything for the first time, is simply the best thing on earth for me. Contradictorily, it feels like a natural habitat. So Galway was the best time of my life so far.

Quite soon, though, I also started realizing that coming back to Belgium and readopting all the old patterns and habits would be very unpleasant. A vague idea started to take root in my mind. Luckily, I voiced those vague ideas to a friend with a lot of life experience quite early. She thought the idea, however vague, was BRILLIANT (thank you Kathleen). From that moment on, the idea was no longer all that vague, and I had decided.

You need to know that in Belgium, most people consider a bachelor's and a master's degree as one single unit, not two separate things in which the second is optional. The general idea is that a bachelor's degree alone is useless and will not get you anywhere - that it is, in fact, a waste of three years of your life to do only that bachelor's degree without adding a master's. I was not aware of how strongly rooted that idea is here. Once I had made my decision, it seemed like the most natural thing in the world to me, and like the best decision I could ever have made.

Unfortunately, this could not be said of most other people.

Luckily I have amazing parents who have a lot of confidence in me, and who always support me to the maximum. I also have a lot of amazing friends - some who were very enthusiastic about my scheme, some who did not like it at all. Fair enough. But then there were all those other people - acquaintances, family, new people I met who, of course, would ask what I do in life. Most of those (luckily not all of them) just pretty much think that I'm out of my mind, and that it's a disgrace my parents are letting me do this. I find this odd. I never even asked my parents, I told them. I feel that by now I'm quite capable of making my own informed decisions. (Which does not lessen my gratitude to my parents for being supportive.)

Oh, well. The decision was made and doubts about my sanity are not going to make me change my mind. It was the best thing I could do for myself at this point in my life. I'd rather spend a year doing many different things to help me find out what I really want to do in life, than spend a year doing a master's degree which doesn't interest me too much at the moment and of which I have no idea if it will lead me anywhere in particular. People tell me I will never find a 'proper' job if I don't have that master's degree. They may be proven right at some point. But if so, nothing stops me from getting that degree after all. It's not like I'm embarking on some irreversible journey into the great nothing. (Also, their ideas of what a 'proper' job is might just differ from mine. Just maybe.)

One thing I know for sure is that this will never be a wasted year. I will learn so much - I am learning so much. I would even dare to argue I'm learning more, or at least things more useful, than I would when doing that inevitable master's degree.

And so it began.

PS. Comments are most welcome at any time. Telling me I'm insane is fine too.