Hello Everyone! My name is Lotte, and I grew up in Cologne, Germany. I am 21 years old. Currently I am studying for my bachelor at Maastricht University. Doing this internship at FIN is part of the specialisation, Emerging Markets that I took in my second year. This post will introduce me and the work I will be doing during my time at FIN!
I will be starting off with how I came to study in Maastricht and ultimately do this internship. I really enjoy travelling in general, and was fortunate enough that when I was younger, my family went to many different countries for vacations. This led me to have a greater interest in other cultures and just the countries itself. One summer, my family and I went on vacation in Tanzania, Africa, which was the first time travelling outside of Europe. Since we had some friends there, we had more of an opportunity to meet locals. Additionally, these friends are doing some projects in Zanzibar (an island on the coast of Tanzania), and my parents got involved, thus I got some insight into doing business in another country and with other cultures. This was also one of the reasons as to why I was interested in doing the specialisation in Emerging Markets.
After I graduated from high school I was still 17 years old, and I knew that I really don’t want to start studying immediately, which is why I took a gap year before starting at Maastricht University. In this gap year I went to the U.S. to do work and travel. I worked at a Bed & Breakfast for some time, and since I did that alone, the timing didn’t really line up with any of my friends, and I decided to travel alone through the U.S.. I feel that this experience definitely made me even more independent than I already was before, and I really enjoyed just going from one city to the next, without much planning. I met a bunch of people there, who I then sometimes explored the city, or just chatted on bus rides and in the hostels with. Meeting so many people and just talking about opinions or whatever was really interesting for me personally, since everyone had a different background.
After that I knew that I didn’t want to go to University in Cologne, my hometown, but that I wanted to go somewhere, without knowing anyone or many people. This is also why I decided to study in Maastricht, since it is still relatively close to Cologne (1h 15 min by car), but it is also another country and the study track is in English. That’s why I ultimately went there.
The things I like doing in my free time are a bit more of creative nature. I like photography and also the editing process after. Since I mainly photograph landscapes, nature, or buildings rather than people, I feel like editing can really change the mood and aesthetic of the picture. Similarly, I also like drawing. I haven’t done it in a while but I used to work with aquarelles or just do some simple sketching. What I also enjoy, and this also calms me down, is watching tv shows. A bit of a paradox is that I don’t really watch many movies, since I feel my attention span has gone down and I can’t really get into it, but I can comfortably watch multiple episode tv shows. As for my favourites, I find it really hard to pick. It would depend my mood and also the genre, so I don’t really have one all-time favourite. Additional to the hobbies that I like doing on my own, I also like going out with friends, hanging out, and getting coffee or drinks.
That’s it about me, so I will come to this internship. The tasks for this internship include many different things, which for most of them I will be working with Anneke. We are making a database on twitter user in the area of sanitation and water which we will be analysing to figure out the most popular and effective hashtags to reach the relevant audience. Additionally, we will be updating the Kameswaram Wikipedia page, and potentially writing a page for FIN itself as well. Lastly, we will be creating tests to figure out the skill level people have in Word, Excel, and PowerPoint. This then can be used to develop lessons to improve those skills.
The last thing I will be doing during my time at FIN, is writing my dissertation. It will be about the differences in sustainability behaviour in everyday life between Indian and European university students. This will hopefully be of value for FIN as well, since the results might give insights into where the differences stem from and it will actively contribute to FIN’s mission of youth leadership training for a sustainable future.
I really enjoyed my time at FIN so far, for the first few months, and I am looking forward to the rest of it!