Writing for (y)EU » Trainee

Is there life after a stage?

Evita — Wed, 31 Aug 2011 15:59:54 +0000

I have never been a trainee. Like many of us I “had” to do a stage when I was at university, but, as at that time I was already working, my working place also became my “stage” place. Not that it is a bad thing.. It was just that way things were. However I feel that I have never experienced the life that I see our trainees have – entering a totally different world, for most of them – in a totally different country, and enjoying it fully. Making new friends from all over the world and introducing everyone to their world.

What I wanted to know was how they saw this experience. And what were the next steps for them, what were the next adventures that they had embarked upon. That is why one day I sent out an email to all the trainees that we’ve had since I’ve worked in WebComm and received quite a few answers.

Here come their stories, all of which tell me that if you have a chance to do a stage outside your country, you should go for it. It makes you see the world from a different perspective.

Lelde

After getting married couple of months ago, she is continuing her path in private business. Her traineeship was a way of deciding whether she would like to work in a governmental institution or take the road of the private sector. She chose the latter and has not regretted that (that is not to say that she didn’t like being with us, of course… :)

For her the traineeship had the beauty of relationships: the people she had her traineeship together with and also the WebCommers, the moments shared were full of laughter, conversations, creativity and hard work. She said that even now the first thought she has in the mind when she thinks of us, is that WebComm has organized a surprise goodbye breakfast in a nearby coffee shop.

(ed. here’s a great post Lelde co-wrote about being a trainee in the Parliament published on the day she left.)

Roberta

She is Italian. She has red hair. And she can get into places when even experienced journalists could not and get that interview that nobody else got…Now she lives in Australia and is a freelance journalist. Just after the traineeship she got married (the proposal was done during her traineeship. Just like with Lelde, actually) and her husband was moving to Australia, so she moved together with him.

She wrote that: “the internship was very important to me and it allowed me to see how the EP works. In another life – without any Australian planning – I would have tried with all my efforts to stay there, maybe working for some politician as Brussels is a sort of heaven for journalists. You don’t have to move around following people or stories, because they are the ones coming to Brussels by themselves.”

Ivana

She is Slovak and gave us all (or at least some of us) nicknames (some of them are still stuck, by the way). After she left Brussels she got a job in Slovak Marketing Agency working on sports events, organizing them and taking care of VIP people such as: Anna Kournikova, Thomas Muster, Michael Stich and others and aiming to climb the career stairs in this area.

The traineeship has helped her to realize how important the social environment at work is, how important it is to have equality, respect and other crucial working values.

She is not saying that she’ll stay in Bratislava for ever. She is instead open to all kind of future possibilities.

Chiara

Half Dutch speaking Belgian, half Italian, fluent in at least 4 languages, Chiara is now living in Burundi and working for the Belgian Development Agency (BTC), as a junior assistant in Bujumbura. This was a choice made even before the traineeship in the Parliament, so the two have nothing to do to each other.

However, she said that “she has realised in what a luxury situation she was working in the WebComm. All the coordination, fluid cooperation among colleagues and leading capacities of a boss(es) are non-existant in Bujumbura. That makes working life quite difficult, and my patience sometimes exploding.

I try to cheer up myself by thinking “it’s all part of a learning process”. However, I don’t always succeed. In short, please treasure your unit and keep it dynamic and enthusiastic like I found it!”

Dan

When Dan was leaving us, our editorial coordinator Thibault was sure that we don’t have to worry about him. And he was absolutely right. Dan had got tired of being “just” a journalist – 12 years have been enough for him. So, he invented a new occupation for himself which was hiding under a name “Media Strategic Consultant” (he is full of ideas, indeed) which in practice meant that he offered fresh ideas on how to catch media attention (being a journalist helps a bit, I guess…)

He had no plans to go back to Brussels and yet one day he was offered to do so. Now Dan is back with us in WebComm (a fact that he loves) but only now his title is “social media producer”. Fancy, right? He says that the title alone in the social media world has put him on a level where he is getting invited to all kind of groups, forums and places where the conversation takes place. But above that he is happy to be a part of the WebComm again.

(ed. Interested in Dan’s back story? We loved this post he wrote during his traineeship)

Rafaela

As the first thing Rafaela mentioned that she remembered how persistent she had to be to get the traineeship- her application was not accepted twice and only the 3rd time had the lucky charm. Rafaela was in the WebComm in the period when the 2009 European Parliament’s elections took place and she feels happy that she was there when the EP started using the social media platforms as she is a strong believer in “informing the citizens about their rights and opportunities in order to increase the level of conscientious participation in civil society”.

Rafaela says that: “Translating complex EU policy jargon into a form that the “common citizen” understands brought altruistic rewards. But after this experience it was clear to me that I wanted to stay in Brussels! Portugal is nice, I know… once you “taste” this “European-multicultural-life-and-work-style-atmosphere” it is difficult to ever turn back … So, here I am… still in Brussels and working for a political communications consultancy as a Senior Consultant in Media Relations. My career is already reaping the rewards for the experience that I had.”

Lyuben

Self-Presentation Tweet: Lyubo Tyulekov, an ex WebComm trainee, last year law student.

After the end of the traineeship he went back to the academic life in the Netherlands – “back to school, back to reality”, as a friend of his likes to say. Lyuben says that “the time spent in the Parliament… gave me the chance to meet a lot of new and interesting people, work in an international environment, but most importantly – get more familiar with the decision making process at a European level from inside, something every European law student (like me) would get pleasure from.”

“In a “self-presentation” blog that I published more than a year ago I wrote that it was a matter of honour and privilege for me to be part of … the Parliament and a cool, fresh unit like Web Communication. Now, almost one and a half year later, I completely stay by my words!”

Different meanings for different media

Indre — Wed, 21 Oct 2009 13:59:08 +0000

She chose traditional media

The different supports – press, radio, TV, internet have different uses and meanings according to different temporal and spatial contexts. Is it the same effect when we read an article in a newspaper, when we hear a radio programme about it, when we watch a television programme or we read a blog in the internet? We can consider that there are some differences. Not only in different uses of it (your hearing is more activated in one case, your vision – in another; you need to make a gesture when you turn the newspaper’s pages and it is enough to click when you read in internet). It also depends on differences between the associations that these media have.

From my personal point of view, these associations are constructed socially but also depend on personal experience. For me, the ‘traditional’ media could not be replaced by www. Why? I remember my grandparents’ summer house where at an exact hour my grand father turned on the radio (national Lithuanian radio) and started listening to the news. It was like a sacred hour, something ritualized that had, and still has, a meaning for my grandparents. My parents watch the news on national television in 8.30 pm every day and I could not imagine that they could replace it by the articles on the internet. As you can see, even the medium can have a special meaning for people.

I also have some special feelings according to different media. For example, pleasures of reading a ‘real’ newspaper (and smelling this new paper) that I don’t feel when I am using the internet. Maybe it is because while reading newspapers or magazines, I concentrate on it more, but I have also a feeling of being in a ‘real’ world. For example, I have my coffee on a ‘terasse’ on a sunny day with a newspaper. Or I take the new Elle magazine with me to the beach; I read magazines on trains or books in a bed. I am in this world.

Even if we stay open-minded, we need some benchmarks and sometimes it is difficult to reach them in a virtual space.

Am I in the same world when I go online? Of course I am. But the problem lies in the associationsof this huge informational machine. I feel as if I am in a different space with lots of information that you need to…manage somehow. My anxiety is about the ability to concentrate when you read something in the internet. Sometimes I have a feeling that I read all the day different things on the internet but I can’t remember any essential thing. It’s a paradox but when you read an article in a bus or on the beach, you hear people talking, laughing, but as a result you are more focused than when you read on the internet. Maybe it is because this kind of information from ‘traditional’ media is a finished product? Something framed that gives you a certain feeling of security? I would like to use a “house” metaphor. We need to frame our space of living; I think it is the same for thinking. Even if we stay open-minded, we need some benchmarks and sometimes it is difficult to reach them in a virtual space.

Whereas sometimes I have a feeling that I lose control in the internet, that the information controls me and it is difficult to reach stability there. It is true that what you find in the internet, you could not find in any ‘real’ newspaper. What is new is that you can quickly compare information you read: this article says this, another interprets the same facts differently; in this magazine you can feel more this ideology… While reading one ‘real’ newspaper or listening to one radio could be dangerous because you have only one image of life. But…how to choose your own manner to consume this huge (‘new’ or ‘old’) world of media?

A tramp abroad

admin — Thu, 26 Feb 2009 16:28:55 +0000

Many of my friends from back in Leeds stood aghast as I announced 5 months ago that I was leaving for Brussels to complete a training contract with the EU – a so-called stage. For my friends, the EU was a mythical beast. Occasionally lamented on the news but always distant and always inexplicable. Even more confusing to them was that I was leaving the warm loving folds of Leeds and heading to Brussels- a city symbolised by a little statue of a small boy urinating into a pond.

As the cliché correctly states, I simply didn’t know what to expect. My apartment was booked online through a very informative trainee housing website so I ended up living quite a long way from work. This means I have to use the Metro system a lot – although I’m pretty certain that the Brussels Metro has only recently stopped using steam power so it didn’t prove too tricky. The system is simple and on the whole, very safe.

Merode station, Brussels

My first day on the stage in the European Parliament was similar to any first day anywhere; bombarded with information and bustled from A to B by grumpy people.

Reaching the safe-haven of my unit, things began to settle down and I was immediately introduced to everyone. As soon as the work kicked into life, I realised how well-oiled this well-oiled machine was! To put it a better way, the work output had the meticulous rhythm of a Swiss watch; every tiny wheel merging seamlessly with every other tiny wheel to produce a glorious flow of synchronisation. I felt a bit like a blind man at a wallpaper convention- sure I was there, but what was I really doing?

I felt a bit like a blind man at a wallpaper convention- sure I was there, but what was I really doing?

Jumping forward five months I can definitely recommend the stage. It can be quite daunting at first- the level of information you have to take on board to feel even halfway there is quite scary. But it does get easier and words and signs start to make sense.

Some pearls of wisdom I would pass:

1- Don’t live in Laeken/Molenbeek- too far away and the sound of gunfire can grow a bit tiresome.
2- Don’t worry if you don’t understand the building layout- it can take 2-3 weeks
3- Treat the canteen as your best friend in the entire world
4- Try and wave at Hans-Gert Pöttering (EP President) at least once on the stage, although in future it may be at Mr Schulz or Mr Watson? Who knows!
5- Be as sponge-like as possible throughout the whole 5 months and you will learn loads.

One final note; if you can sneak into some of the Commission’s activities such as the stagiaire 6 a-side football league you will have the time of your life! When you arrive, if anyone asks which Commission department you are from pretend you are Russian. Also if you go, make sure you ask which team won the last winter stage league. You may stumble across league champions Char 14/217 and a mute Russian footballer called Richard Streeton.

Image source.