My Internship at Spotted by Locals

Hi, I’m Remus. I was born and raised in Romania, but I’ve been in the Netherlands for a few years now for my studies. I am about to graduate from IBCoM (International Bachelor Communication and Media) at Erasmus University Rotterdam, as well as finish my internship at Spotted by Locals. Actually, by the time you are reading this, there’s a pretty good chance that I have been long done with both.

One aspect of my Bachelor’s program that I found particularly challenging was the fact that it required me to do an internship. I knew this from the start, and I was fine with that. But things turned out to be quite different from what I expected. Around the time I started seriously looking for an internship, the COVID-19 started spreading throughout the world. That made me delay my search process for a long time. I figured I’d just wait until the lockdown was over, and then have a typical office internship. But as I kept waiting, things weren’t getting any better.

By ‘a long time’, I mean that I was at a point where I genuinely thought I might not be able to graduate because of my internship (or lack thereof). As such, I decided to widen my ‘net’ a bit. I started considering remote internships (which I was quite hesitant about because I thought working from home would make it difficult to take things seriously etc.). One thing led to another, and thankfully, I came across Spotted by Locals. I sent an email to Bart (the co-founder), and he was quick to reply and schedule an interview.

As for the internship itself, it’s been… a journey. A short yet interesting one. As expected, I did have some trouble with the remote/flexible aspect in the beginning. Being able to choose your own hours is great, but it can be an issue as well. In my case, I found time management and work-life balance rather challenging. My solution was to treat it like a 9 to 5. I decided to do all my work within a specific schedule. I didn’t succeed in doing just that every single day, but I stuck to my schedule as much as I could. Turns out, some level of organization does help. Also, Bart would always promptly answer my questions, which is something I did not expect to be possible in a remote internship.

You already know this if you’ve seen the internship page, but flexibility is really the key term here. Not only when it comes to your schedule, as I was saying earlier, but for your tasks as well. There are a few tasks you might absolutely have to do, but the vast majority of your work/responsibility is up to you. Sometimes, Bart might even give you specific tasks that he knows you can learn from. Of course, you are always free to suggest new things that you would like to do, or even new ways to go about the things you are already doing. Basically, critical thinking and initiative are always appreciated.

All in all, I am definitely grateful for this opportunity; even though it wasn’t without its setbacks, I feel that I’ve been able to learn quite a bit. And I could say more about it, but really, at the end of the day, my experience will likely be different from yours. If you choose to apply to this internship, your experience will be tailor-made for you (and to some extent by you! – yay, agency). So if you’ve read a bit about Spotted by Locals’ mission, and you like the idea of supporting it in any way, shape, or form… you know what to do!

Interested in being our next intern at Spotted by Locals? Check this page!