Internship

After finishing my bachelor education in Denmark and Germany, I had a strong need to try out what I had learned during the relatively intensive bachelor education.  On walls at Hochschule Osnabrück in Germany, where I studied during the last year of my bachelor education, there was information about several excellent internship opportunities, which helped students acquire work experience working with a variety of organizations. I really appreciated that. So when I was in Germany, I applied for an internship in France. I recall that I was very positively surprised when a chamber of commerce in Nantes in France invited me to come to Nantes to help French companies from the region. So off I went to Nantes - with a bag of clothes and a bicycle.

During 8 months from 1995 to 1996, I helped French companies based around Nantes in France with various tasks. For example, I assisted  companies in creating marketing and sales materials in French, German and English. The purpose was to help potential clients of the companies to learn more about the products and technologies they had developed and were developing. I liked to learn about products that the companies created and/or were creating and to extract the most important benefits for potential clients. What I also liked was using various technologies to design the marketing and sales materials. I recall that I worked on combining the use of photos and text in order to make the information as useful as possible for potential clients.  With other students, I also accompanied people, who worked for the French companies, at trade fairs in Germany. 

The internship was a phenomenal opportunity to apply theoretical knowledge that I learned during my bachelor education. The practical experience provided context to the theoretical knowledge I had obtained during bachelor education. For example, the work experience helped me understand challenges that people, who work for different organizations, have.