Great Leaders

Being my second semester and my first years in the country, I decided to do an internship. I took this decision because I needed some experience in life. At that point, I was not sure what to do in the future and I was not sure of my skills. I decided that working with a real life company could give me the experience that I was looking for. My first language is Spanish and I am very shy, but more than that, I knew that this was a great opportunity to learn. And I learned more than I thought because I met really kind people.

Some students need the internship credit for the school. However, I was there to learn and practice. My degree did not require it. I was decided to learn and nothing more. The first day of my work was a Friday, the day of a team meeting. This day, I had the chance to meet most of the team, but I was very nervous. I was afraid to lose the conversation, but our boss told me to interrupt the meetings and ask questions if I had any problem, and that made me feel better. All the team was there to teach me. At the team meeting, everyone tells what they did through the week and explain the work. But, they explained almost everything for me too.

Pivot works with so many companies and I decided to work with a real estate one. So I went there all Mondays through Thursdays. I was interested in the business, but the best part of this is that I met new people. The people there are really smart people and I could feel their experience, so I sat down and listened to everything they said; I wanted to learn, after all. Time went by and they decided that I needed to work with a real estate agent in particular. I met the agent and I felt like a pupil. She actually was my mentor because she explained how the business works, and I could even attend to one of her meetings with investors. I also wanted to help in this company and they asked me to do so, then I developed my own database of investors and I learned how to start an email marketing campaign. It showed great results after some weeks.

Working as an assistant of a real estate agent was really good, but my mentor was also a friend. I could learn from her lessons that people cannot learn at school. Those lessons are lessons from life, because the school cannot teach us how real life is. In fact, I met teachers in this internship experience. Every single day at the real estate company and in every single team meeting Fridays I learned lessons.

At the end, my internship process was completed in a month and a half. I wanted to continue working even if I do not get money in exchange, because I get something more valuable: I get experience in exchange. At Pivot, I learned how to be a little bit more extroverted, more talkative. I practiced English and I learned about life. There are some lessons that the school cannot teach us because we have to learn by ourselves with our own experience; I could learn that through my internship process. Now I am more confident of my own skills and what I could do in the future because I met great teachers, and I learned a lot.