Everything you know after week one of an internship in London

There’s always a first time for everything. Three weeks ago was the first day of my first paid internship in London. I thought I had learn what independence was during my first year in college, but apparently not.

Arriving in a city where I had been twice but knew next to nothing about to do a 6 week internship was definitely a challenge.

Discovering a whole new style and heels

Working in corporate London means investing in a whole new kind of wardrobe – cue buying an entire collection of tights, dresses and heels, only to be totally lost on what to wear on the first day.

Trying  five different dresses, three vests, two pairs of shoes and doing your hair and make up twelve times on the first morning is totally normal – after all, that’s why you woke up four hours before the work day actually starts.

Trying to find your way around

The second challenge during this first week was to not get lost. Inevitably, you leave your homestay with enough time to arrive an hour early, only to turn the wrong way down Oxford Street, get lost in a sea of tourists and sprint your way up to reception to meet the team on day one.

Hi, I have arrived and I’m tube-sticky.

iPhones and data are meant to negate problems like this – but sucks to be you if you don’t have an international data plan.

Rush hour is a sweaty reality even in rainy England

We always hear the words “rush hour” and think it can’t be that bad… Well let me tell you, it is. In London there’s a train every 60 seconds during rush hour but sometimes you have to wait for five trains to go by until you can actually get on it. Once you’re in, the first thing you do is try to find a way to breath and not die of heat exhaustion.

After three weeks you realize it’s something you’ll never get used to.  Does anyone really like the tube?

Learning how to wake up early in the morning

Yeah sure in high school you could get up at 6 am and go to school and then something happened in College. Your bed is just too addictive.

Waking up at 7:15 am every morning when you’re technically on summer break is brutal.

You’re excited, but your summer brain is wired to stick to your bed until the very last minute, especially when you know that you have to be on the tube for 40 min to get there.

Naturally, you also have to learn to go to bed early or crumple under the 4pm caffeine crash

Doing this from 9 am to around 6 pm takes a lot of energy. At 18 you’d think that being tired and going to bed before 11 pm is crazy.  Well, it’s actually possible… Without at least 8 hours of sleep working in the afternoon gets really hard.

That’s when you’ll understand why parents don’t want to do anything after they come back from work. Please be nice to them, they don’t have the energy to deal with anything!

You will be bombarded with names on your first day

You won’t remember any of them.

Having an internship for 6 weeks means that you can learn A LOT. In just five days, you learn about how the company works and what they do and how they do it. On top of meeting so many people every day, you learn how to use the different data bases and how they work to sell and do marketing for their funds and products (I intern in the sales and marketing team).

If you’re lucky, you realize pretty fast how endlessly patient your colleagues are.  They explain everything three times even when busy and somehow disguise their annoyance.

Learning how to do a to do list and multi tasking

If you’re a disorganized student like me then you might get just a little overwhelmed by all these people coming up to you with piles of work. That’s when you discover how to make a to do list. By the end of you’ll first week you’ll be a dab hand at one of life’s most important qualities – organization.

It’s actually possible to do something on your computer (especially when you have up to five different computer screens in front of you), have a conversation and follow whatever is on TV (either news or football/ soccer). In the end, you also learn how to be concentrated for an extended period of time.

Being paid actually makes you realize how expensive life is

The first week of paid internship also makes you see your daily life in a new way. Taking the tube and buying food (there’s a Pret on every corner, and it’s far too tempting) is already a budget on its own.

You have ‘colleagues’ for the first time and they don’t do lunch breaks

On top of skills and learning about yourself, the first week of an internship is when you discover a new kind of relationship. We all have friends and family but you actually have colleagues too. Yes, they can also be your friends outside, but it’s predominantly a professional relationship.

Doing an internship in London helps to experience this because they don’t do lunch breaks. You go out, buy your lunch or bring a lunch from home and eat it in front of your computer – so the only time you can actually socialize with others is after work.

Everyone communicates via email or instant messenger – even if they’re sat touching distance from each other

Is it just an English thing? Who knows.

You understand why all those team building/ projects that we did at school and at camp were important

Working in a company usually means that you have to work with others who might be completely different from you but you have to make it work somehow. There will be conflicts and you’ll dislike some people, but you have to deal with it.

As an intern you get an inside scoop inside everything that happens and even looking at people getting mad at each other is interesting because you get to see how people manage to get out of conflicts.

The first week of your internship is so important because it’s a first opportunity to experience the life in a company from the inside.

You realize that life after college is not always easy, but you learn to deal with it because – mainly because you want to make life as easy as possible for your lovely, patient new colleagues.