Hey, I’m Lara and I’m in the 11th gra­de at the Ro­bert Bosch Fach­ober­schu­le (FOS) in Mu­nich, in the in­ter­na­tio­nal busi­ness branch. I’m do­ing my prac­ti­cal training at TecAlliance. The prac­ti­cal training is a “school sub­ject” at the FOS that is gra­ded like any other (in the Ab­itur it counts like the P‑Seminar). The idea be­hind the “in­tern­ship” is to get to know as many de­part­ments of a com­pa­ny as pos­si­ble to help us choo­se a care­er.  

First I was in the con­trol­ling team. This hel­ped me to get a ge­ne­ral over­view of the com­pa­ny and thus made it re­la­tively easy for me to get star­ted. Du­ring this time, I also work­ed in the ac­coun­ting de­part­ment so that I could ful­ly grasp the in­voice pro­ces­sing pro­cess. Du­ring this time, I was very gra­teful that ever­yo­ne made me feel like I could­n’t ask en­ough ques­ti­ons. This made me feel wel­co­me from the very be­gin­ning. 

I spent the se­cond and third pha­ses of my in­tern­ship with the Mar­ke­ting and PR de­part­ment. In the se­cond pha­se, I spent a lot of time on social media tasks, which was still very Ger­man-hea­vy. In the third pha­se, in which I com­ple­te­ly swit­ched to home of­fice due to the gi­ven Co­ro­na si­tua­ti­on, a va­rie­ty of tasks were ad­ded, main­ly on an in­ter­na­tio­nal le­vel. The­se two pha­ses taught me an in­cre­di­ble amount about the im­portance of clear com­mu­ni­ca­ti­on, both writ­ten and per­so­nal. The­re was also never a lack of fun with the team. 

Working at home in­iti­al­ly pre­sen­ted me with the chall­enge of how to struc­tu­re my working day in a way that I am dis­trac­ted as litt­le as pos­si­ble and get as much done as be­fo­re. Once this had sett­led in well af­ter about 2–3 days, it no lon­ger made a dif­fe­rence to me whe­ther I work­ed at home and ex­ch­an­ged ide­as with col­le­agues over Teams or whe­ther I sat in the of­fice. This si­tua­ti­on, in which you have to be very fle­xi­ble, will de­fi­ni­te­ly help me in my fu­ture working life.