Legendary Summer 2018 — My Erasmus Internship Experience. Ucha Vekua
Hello, I am Ucha — Georgian student in TalTech. Today I want to tell you about my Erasmus Internship experience in Barcelona that happened in summer 2018 and was totally amazing. I would recommend this program to any student. So, here are the steps how I found the internship and how my summer went in 2018.
First step to take part in the Erasmus Internship program was to find the company in which I would go for exchange. For that, I started searching for possibilities on some relevant websites. The most helpful one, which I would recommend everyone to use was: https://erasmusintern.org/traineeships — this is the website that is used by some companies to promote their internship programs among international students. Here you can filter possibilities by the country you want to go to, degree, field of studies, duration of the internship, etc. Also, I searched for the internships on TalTech website, which was also really helpful.
In this case, my target was Spain, because I know many people from that country and I always wanted to go there to see the Spanish culture and everyday life. After some research, I found some companies that would correspond to my field of interests. So, the first step was almost done for me. Now I had to contact those companies and see if they would accept my request to work with them for the summer 2018. I sent out a couple of e-mails and asked some questions about the internships.
At the same time, I went to the Mobility Center of TalTech to ask some questions about the procedures for my internship. The main question was how I could get the Erasmus Scholarship and what the procedures to transfer credits from this program were. The coordinator was supportive and she helped me a lot to complete all the steps until the end of this program.
After some time, I found the company that I was interested to work in. However, the most important part was that this company was located in the city of my dreams — Barcelona. I always wanted to live there for some time and learn more about its culture. I was sure that it would be an unforgettable experience for me to explore the city and have working experience in such a big and multi-cultural place.
After decision was made, I received the acceptance letter from the company I wanted to go to. Then I went to the Mobility Center in TalTech once again to present all the necessary documents. After that, I had to declare the course from my curriculum to bring some credit points. So, I went to the Dean to arrange details about that. After all the details were arranged, I sent the Learning Agreement to the company and applied for the Erasmus scholarship. The procedure was easy and everyone from TalTech helped me a lot. They also provided me a free Spanish language online course, which was very useful for me.
By that time, I was ready to go to Barcelona and start my internship. I couldn’t wait to do so. I arrived to Barcelona on 10th of June and had to be there until the end of August. For that, I needed to arrange my transportation and accommodation. For the transportation — I chose Ryanair, because I got the discount on flights and free luggage with my ESN Card. About the accommodation, I started searching for places in different websites, but Uniplaces.com was the most helpful one — I also got a discount there with my ESN Card. So, this card is a very useful thing to have if you plan to do an Erasmus exchange.
Finally, I finished my semester in Tallinn and went to Barcelona to experience a totally new culture and meet new exciting people in Spain from all over the world.
First, I went to the company where I was doing the internship. I started working there in two departments — Digital Marketing and Programming. Tasks for me as a Marketing Intern was to do online marketing, blogging, community management, sales. I was trained in various platforms in order to perform different campaigns using Google Adwords, Wordpress, Facebook, Twitter and social media managers as well as viral video campaigns on Youtube and other social media services in order to increase the promotion of our products and services. On the other hand, there were Programming Services for our websites, quotation of programming solutions to our clients. I as an intern had to update company’s websites, mobile applications, develop team’s startup ideas and projects samples, also to participate in proposed projects and client’s projects.
The internship was going great. I met many new and interesting people in the company. Other than that, Barcelona is a very active city when it comes to social life — there are parties, meetups, sessions and events every day. My favorite thing to do there was to attend to the Language Exchange Tandem events in some bars in the evenings and start communicating with new people from all over the world with various backgrounds — it was a fantastic experience for me. We also went to some different places of Barcelona together and planned some tours around Catalonia. Moreover, experienced the Fiesta culture there, where the streets are competing with each other in decorating their area. There are also many great museums in Barcelona to visit and explore. I used to visit those places with my friends from Greece, Poland, U.K, Italy and many other countries.
To sum it up, I spent an unforgettable summer in Barcelona thanks to the Erasmus Internship Program. I went to a great Digital Marketing company, where I gained valuable experience and I explored Spanish culture, met many amazing people, had countless weird travel experiences and fully enjoyed the summer of 2018.
