Throughout my university years, I received this constant advise from people: Enjoy your years because right now is the peak of your life and everything gets more and more exhausting once you start working. People would keep complaining about how hard it is to work from 9 to 5, how hard it is to keep your finances in balance, or not having a holiday to relax for a long time.
With all that talking, I become more and more scared of getting a job that I don’t like that it will take my energy and at one point I will no longer enjoy my life as I do in my University years. This fear found me even before I graduated because I had to do an internship to finish my Bachelor’s. So I searched and searched for 2 years to find an internship that will both give me enough experience and knowledge while avoiding any corporations or institutions that felt too task-oriented or just in need of labor.
When I was nearly about to give up, I saw the Willingness internship program applications and decided to search how they work a little. The moment I opened their website I could see it had a really strong team spirit. I was extremely excited after I saw that they are working in a multidisciplinary manner with many professionals but still managed to keep a friendly environment and unity between team members.
What I thought was confirmed the moment I came to Malta and meet with all Willingness team as well as the other interns I will be getting to know in those 2 months. The meetings were in a casual spirit which allowed us to feel comfortable enough both in the space and with the topics. Each one of the team members took their time to explain what they are doing in Willingness, what their interests are, which projects they currently working on and had a workshop with us even though they seem extremely busy. Everybody created time for us be it work-related or not and it made me feel like I am a part of a big group, not just some person that is going to be there for 2 months and then going back to what they were doing.
Many of us interns had different interests, both academically and personally. This internship let us reflect on our personality in our work by giving us enough freedom on tasks so it was always entertaining to create presentations, audits, or writing blogs where we can just be ourselves and share it with others too. It didn’t put us in boxes to match their standards but embraced the diversity of knowledge and let us adapt it without moving further from what we were enthusiastic about.
I am happy that I had a chance to see a working environment that is not limiting people’s creativity but instead encouraging them to be unique in their own way while still making them feel like they are part of a team. Now I am not afraid of working in a boring job that will dull me day by day and give me no space to improve myself, I just need to find a job that suits me or even build one myself if necessary, as Willingness was once created from the scratch.
Billur Godek is a third grade undergraduate Psychology student in Turkey and is part of the Willingness International Summer Internship Programme 2019. Her interests briefly involve environmental psychology and its effects on both mental and physical health.