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!

Beginner's luck

Indeed, I got hired at the opera house. I could never have guessed that my first job application ever would be so easy, but it was. I was quite nervous for the interview, but it went very smoothly - no weird questions to test my knowledge about the opera house, and even speaking French went surprisingly well after not speaking it at all for three years.

Also, my interviewers were not exactly intimidating (by which I mean nothing bad) seeing as they were two nice girls of barely a few years older than me (I would later find out that they were indeed 26 and 27 or thereabouts). I was supposed to go for a second interview with the head of department a while later, but that got cancelled and I just got hired right away. (Looking back I am glad it did get cancelled, as the head of department is actually a French lady, and it would have been a lot more stressful to have to do everything in French rather than switching between that and Dutch).

So I got hired, for a four-month period, September to December. This meant I could start my summer holidays without having to be stressed about finding a job. And of course I was very excited to find out what the opera house would be like. What is also very convenient, is that I could make the internship count for a number of ECTS for a Cutural Studies master's degree. I was not planning to really do the degree this year, but by doing the internship already, I could keep the official status of 'student', which makes things a lot easier when it comes to administration and all that jazz.

Sounds like a lot of beginner's luck all at once, right? I think so too. Must be good karma. I hope it's not all downhill from here for the rest of the year.

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.