On Friday, I concluded my first week of my internship experience at the Liaison Office of the University of Freiburg and Eucor for North America, which is located in the German consulate in New York. Although I have only been there a short while, it has already been an exciting and engaging experience, and I think it will serve as a wonderful capstone experience for my master’s program with the School of International Affairs.
I have been fortunate enough to work with the amazing director of the New York Liaison Office, Dr. Markus Lemmens, who has been kind, enthusiastic, and patient. He and the other members of my office speak with me almost entirely in German, which is already proving to be incredibly beneficial for my German skills. Furthermore, this kind of immersion was something I feared I could only experience by returning to Germany for some period of time, but in many ways my experience working at the German consulate had proved much more beneficial in terms of practical development of my language skills. Utilizing my German skills in the work environment is giving me a chance to build my professional vocabulary and strengthen office and business skills that will serve me well in any future job entailing German communication. When I interviewed for several positions this past spring, one question that arose did concern the extent of my experience and comfort level using German in a professional environment, and thanks to this internship, I feel that I am steadily increasing my skills in this field in a way that travel or even academic study in Germany did not provide the opportunity to do. Additionally, working in a German organization in the United States allows me to avoid the trap that so often captures many Americans that go abroad to try and work on their language skills — I am not enthusiastically approached by people hoping to work on their English skills. One of the greatest challenges I faced when I was studying abroad was the fact that many Europeans or other students I met were just as eager to practice their English as they were their German (or, if they were native Germans, to use their English) so they would switch to speaking to me in English rather than patiently allow me to try and practice my German. Furthermore, when I was living within communities of exchange students, even those whose first language wasn’t English were often more comfortable in their English skills than their German and would default to using English as the common language to cross language barriers between cultures, stranding me in an area of utilizing my native language rather than building any of my foreign language skills. Here, however, I’m not the only American insight; besides the normality of using German as the working language because almost every one else who works there is German, there are plenty of opportunities for my colleagues to step outside the building and put their own English skills to use. Markus has been great about identifying a number of areas of professional skills for me to develop over the course of the summer, and has assigned me projects to work on these skills, which include marketing and professional relationship development, journalistic writing, event logistics, and fundraising. I am excited to report on my experiences with each of these specific areas of interest as the summer progresses.
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