Looking for an internship to sail away on

Hi, nice to meet you — my name is Albin and not knowing what’s next is unsettling me a lot. Consider this as some kind of motivational letter to join your crew.

To me, the shift from academia to joining the professional workforce seems like a big transition. You go from spending most of your time in a reasonably safe, padded environment, learning and exploring skills to using them for real-life work where failing is a dangerous option. And in between, the internship as some kind of pillow to soften the whole experience. Did I get this right?

The school I attend, Hyper Island, is and odd place compared to equal-level schools. One could say it’s more like an adult kindergarten for creative people than upper-level education. But if you ask me, this weird methodology works, and well. The reason I aimed to get in here in the first place is all the amazing alumni work I saw while surfing the web. After I arrived, however, I realized part of what’s behind all of that is another factor: how it’s made. By that I don’t mean the actual crafting part, but the mindset and teamwork. I’ve had an amazing experience here. I’ve learnt a good amount of hard tool skills faster than ever before, which wouldn’t have been possible without the great environment around me. I’ve met such kind, friendly and truly talented people, many more than willing to share skills and ideas.

But I’ve also been subject to the image I perceive this place I’ve come to love has in the industry. According to my ideas and impressions of marketing material and external testimonials we’re wunderkids of digital media, producing amazing work at amazing speeds, with amazing insights, results and clarity. Living with that hype is a rough ride sometimes, but I don’t want to complain, only hope I can keep delivering. This feeling somewhat contradicts the aim of the teachings I’ve experienced here — doing things at your own level, albeit going out of your comfort zone — but I do feel some pressure anyway.

Here in school, I’m enjoying status as a knowledgeable, or at least helpful person. I help my peers out a lot (so much my program manager tells me I should charge for it). While that’s fun and rewarding in some way for all of us, I always worry (just like the next guy, probably) if what I’m actually doing is “the” right way or even a good way. I look at the outside industry as another, different bubble and see myself and my skills in the reflection as being not up to the hype nor task. Maybe just that divide and mindset is my problem — I’m hoping my internship can help me change or challenge that view.

Oh, and yes, this is about finding an internship, sorry for the detour. I’d need to search, find and apply for one, but I’m too “busy” procrastinating by watching tiny hamsters eat tiny pizza, Netflix’ing or spending time polishing my portfolio to the extent that it might blind people once I get it up. Frankly, the idea of moving somewhere and to put my skills to real use to get a salary scares the hell out of me. But hopefully I’ll be just fine — if my amazing inspirations could, I can too. *positive thinking*

What can you offer me?

I enjoy creating appealing, thoughtful design (User Interfaces are cool) and am good friends with Photoshop and Illustrator, as well as the rest of Adobe’s CS to some extent (counting out Flash). Also, I’m befriending XCode to write awesome things in Objective-C; in addition to not letting my older skills in web, front-end (my JS skills are rusty though) and back-end (Hey, PHP and WordPress, what’s up?), get dull.

Now, these are all hard skills — in the way of soft ones, my forte is probably being a caring, humble teammate. I’m eager to explore and learn, but solving what needs to be solved is also important to me. I like ideation — post-its rock. I probably won’t raise your coffee costs since I only drink ice lattes when it comes to coffee. In my spare time I enjoy books, movies and diving (lately mostly freediving). I occasionally shoot stuff with my dear camera; an awesome way to document, explore and understand the present. (Insights, insights!)

What and when then? What do you want to get out of it all?

I’m looking for one between the beginning of August and mid-December this year (that’s 2014). I’d love to get mentored in a way that lets me carry my mindset from here in a good way into the industry, and keep honing it. In other words, an open, honest and caring culture is on my wish list. I’d also love if you have a ping-pong table or similar; great for breaks. Work wise, I wouldn’t mind wearing different hats shared between design and development (I’m aiming to become one of those multi-disciplinary unicorns). If you have a mobile focus, that’s awesome, though I’m also open for other digital stuff.

Things I’d love to tinker and learn about include Ruby (with Rails), more Cocoa and iOS stuff, Sketch, and hardware (maybe in the sense of let’s-break-this-thing-apart-and-see-what-we-can-do-with-it?).

How do I get in touch with you?

I’m @alphahw on Twitter. You can send me e-mail at albin.halinenwilen@hyperisland.se.

My portfolio isn’t up yet as stated above, but there’s a landing page on alphahw.eu with some links to stuff I’ve made.

(Update: I did eventually get through enough of all the tiny hamsters eating tiny pizza to finish the portfolio. URL is still the same as above.)

I’d love if you left me some feedback on this.

When do we set sail?