As I begin to approach the end of my internship and my time in Scotland, it is really interesting to reflect on the opportunities I have had and how I have learned and grown in my experiences. I have been interning with The Destiny Project, a mental health charity, for 6 weeks now, creating an anti-stigma social media campaign in addition to other tasks revolving around marketing and external relationships with partners of TDP.
Business as I have experienced it in Scotland is very different than in the United States. In general, it is significantly more laid back than in the U.S., with workdays commonly starting around 10am and with a great deal of flexibility. It is very people oriented, with our office often feeling more like a community center than an office, with friends of TDP popping in to say hello. My supervisor and co-workers are extremely supportive and invested in my fellow intern and I as people, doing whatever they can to help us not only professionally, but academically and personally, and the relationships in the office truly do feel more like a family than coworkers. Another huge difference that I have seen in Scotland compared to the U.S. is how they value working to live over living to work. Where it is common in the U.S. to make work your life, in Scotland, I found that it is very important to people to really enjoy life outside of work. They greatly value spending quality time with one another; even every day at the office, we would take breaks throughout the day to eat lunch or have tea and coffee and have conversation and check in on each other, and when we had business meetings, they were always done over drinks at a restaurant or pub. Overall, business in Scotland is much more relaxed and people oriented and in my experience, not corporate or professional.
The non-corporate nature of internship, although a bit strange to navigate initially, has really given me a lot of room to grow and develop my skills and portfolio as a marketing student. Although I was given very limited instruction and direction, I found a great opportunity in creating my campaign without restraint, taking the project in my own direction, and exploring my own ideas and capacity. This allowed me to grow so much, both in practicing applying skills from past courses and in having confidence in my designs and abilities. Overall, the environment of Scottish business allowed me to explore beyond my comfort zone in a very supportive environment aa well as giving me the opportunity to present ideas and the freedom to request tasks in any capacity I wished, such as redesigning their website and teaching my coworkers how to use programs such as Canva to enhance their operations, allowing me to learn and grow in a multitude of ways beyond what I could have initially hoped for.
