The Internship Experience in Covid-19 Times | Part 2
This post is part 2 of a series of posts. To check out Part One, click here.
A month has gone by from the assignment of the Erasmus Traineeship scholarship. It's early February by now. January has been rather quiet on the project front, although a lot of behind-the-scene work has likely taken place. Covid-19 is still prominent all around the globe. Vaccines have been rolling out for a month now. Essential workers have been vaccinated first. The process of vaccine distribution is rather slow. The time in which vaccines have been tested and produced unprecedented. There is a lingering layer of snow on the house roofs and hills surrounding the place I am in at the moment of writing. University is still taking place remotely. Over the last 2 weeks some companies presented themselves and their available internship positions to us, in a remote Cisco Webex room. They are not many. For now, most of them are based in the UK. This is the geographical region whose opportunities I intend to apply for. And also the Scandinavian Countries, if positions are available there. The wide majority of corporations offer remote internship positions. This article is a good read on how the world of knowledge work is likely changing permanently owing to Covid-19.
The matching process is kicking off. We are asked to upload our CVs and Cover Letters on a centralized platform, so that the professors responsible for the Traineeship process at our University can check and send them to the organizations we express our interest toward. I upload my CV in early February, and express my interest in joining specific positions, some of which also require a cover letter. This is what the CV looks like. I made it using Canva. Making CVs and cover letters is a rather daunting process as far as I can tell. It is a signaling game mostly based on showcasing your seemingly relevant life and professional achievements, being discrete but expansive at the same time. It can be energy-depleting, especially if you tend toward introversion. A week passes by, without significant news on the internship front.