“This internship has allowed me the opportunity to reach out to some big names both in the field and at the university which has been an interesting element to my learning.”
Julia, WUSC, Honours Political Science, WUSC Malawi office, Research Officer
My first month as an intern for WUSC Malawi as been both enlightening and fairly easy to adjust to. My particular placement is slightly different from what my peers this year are experiencing as my mandate expects me to produce research reports on certain areas of interest for the Malawi offices. This combined with the time difference between Ottawa, Canada and Lilongwe, Malawi leaves me working almost entirely independently, with only monthly check-ins as supervision.
This is evidently quite different from my time as an undergraduate student as I used to work based on deadlines and due dates- now I have several months to produce two research reports on subjects I am entirely unfamiliar with. This has proven to be the most fulfilling and interesting part of my work so far, despite my initial fears. Blind research is a very interesting way to spend weeks at a time, allowing my interests and curiosity lead my search rather than a syllabus. It can be very daunting at first, but it taught me to let go of my performance fears and delve into a foreign and strikingly interesting country.
My everyday work always begins with emails and passes on to researching whatever question needs answering that week. This usually leads to lunch, which then leads to either compiling the funding I was looking into this month and analyzing the content. I write this a month and a half into my internship, where I have now finished writing my first research report and am reviewing feedback that mentors and colleagues have given. I will admit, the writing of this report was definitely a relief as it was a return to the familiar processes that we use in university. Drafting the structure, writing out the bulk of the content and adding relevant citations, then requesting my friends and professors to review the paper is typically how I spend every weekend during the school year. Working this internship was a step into completely new territory and the lack of in person office culture, or having regular colleagues, or even working with material that is familiar threw me off more than transitioning to online work ever did. Bear in mind I work in customer service in the summer, and therefore have not worked at home yet.
That being said, I appreciate the opportunity as I believe it is fairly close to the work I will be doing in the future and being off balance at this stage is much more forgiving than the first few month at the first professional job I work would be.
This internship has allowed me the opportunity to reach out to some big names both in the field and at the university which has been an interesting element to my learning. I originally felt quite lost on where to start researching which led me to seek out experts to see how they approach these types of projects and what they like to see in the resulting reports. Networking is, of course, a somewhat mysterious aspect of career building we infrequently touch on in undergrad. These connections will hopefully continue to be fruitful and beneficial as time goes on.