In my 21 years of life, one can say I’ve had my share of work experience whether it being a casual part time job in an FnB industry or a full time internship in an event management industry. Two extremely different industries yet both industries have taught me many unknown things about myself, people’s characters, a taste of how the “real life”, the working world is, valuable life lessons and many more. Working itself is such a useful experience as it enhanced my knowledge, skills, abilities and attitude in a positive and progressive way. You really do learn a lot about yourself without even realising it.
My FnB industry experience, I worked part time at a couple of ice-cream parlours such as Inside Scoop and Joy St and I too have worked at a fast food burger joint which is MyBurgerLab. FnB is very much a fast paced, busy, interactive industry and I never realised it until I got into it and as a shy, socially awkward person that I am, I was very much internally terrified as I had to step out of my comfort zone which had anxiety consumed me. Nevertheless it really was such a great experience and exposure as this industry really made me push myself to gain the confidence to converse with strangers and colleagues, there are days you’ll feel overwhelmed with the pressure to always be on point and happy with the customers and to do things right. FnB taught me that the customers are always right, not all people are nice and customers don’t really treat the workers right. All these learning lessons really was stepping stone to what it was going to be in the real working world in a different industry for me and I couldn’t be more thankful that I got to experience it.
For my experience in the Events Industry, I was lucky enough to do an 3 month long Internship Program as part of college course. I interned at one of the most known music events companies which is called Livescape Group. They have many known IP brands which are ItsTheShip which is Asia’s largest festival on sea, Rockaway Festival, Electric Run and many more. Although I wasn’t able to experience and get the full exposure of the physical side of the events side (which was going to happen), because of this whole Covid-19 situation, I still definitely learned more things (both positive and negative) about myself and the industry than I could imagine and it was a great takeaway of both work and life lessons to carry with me for a long time.
Livescape Group is very much a fast spaced, stressful, intense, fun, big, family-orientated company which includes about 8 departments. They have a “work hard, party hard” motto which I feel is one of the big motivators for the company as everyone always works 110% and parties just as much. Working at Livescape, it gave me insights to many things such as firstly, they have a boss who is such a chill guy and he has this leadership style which is called “holacracy” which is where everyone in the company is treated as equals. Everyone was able to voice out their opinions, without getting shunned down upon and this was such a surprising yet refreshing thing to witness as it is very rare and unique treatment to have as most companies don’t have.
I worked as part of the events teams department in the company which includes about 12 people including the other interns. From what I can vividly remember, working there was a turmoil of emotions as it can be overwhelming and as well as underwhelming. There’s one end where you’re either super stressed as you’re given many tasks that have deadlines which overlap each other. Then there’s the other end where you are given nothing so you just sit there at your desk waiting for the day to end and all these showed me that time either flies by so fast or it drags on so long and you just got to adapt to it. Which brings me to adaptation, even if you had not had any previous working experience in the events industry, it does not matter as long as you can adapt to the environment, work speed and situation as quickly as you can or else it is to be known that your not equipped for that industry and that you are pretty much inadequate and as exaggerated as that sounds, that was pretty much the reality of it.
In all honesty, even though it was stressful working there, at the end of the day, I did learn a lot despite the whole situation. I learned to create decks to pitch to clients, create Profit and Loss sheets, etc and many more. In addition, I learned that having social communication skills is vital to have as you are always conversing with either your clients, colleagues, bosses, etc. The theory and practical side of events blatantly differs from each other such as the researching part of it to curating and executing an event. There’s always going to be favouritism and politics within the company and you just gotta accept it. What I did love whilst working there was how my seniors were willing to push us interns out of our comfort zone and really make us discuss and voice out our creative ideas and they really listen to you and are attentive to what you have to say. I was really in awe of listening to my seniors stories about their experience in the industry, seeing how hard they work yet still find a way to make things fun even when the work was stressful, really was one of the reasons to push myself harder in this company. My seniors would bring us interns out and buy us lunch, take us out having drinks and all these little things really made the whole experience better and it was cute as we became like a small family.
With all these being said, I want to amplify that doing an Internship program or having work experience in any industry really teaches you and shows you who you really are as a person, how far you are willing to push yourself to achieve something and how motivated you can be into learning something new everyday. Every industry isn’t going to be fair at times and sometimes you just gotta accept things as it is and work harder. It’s also easy to be demotivated and it’s easy to give up easily when things get hard, but you just have to find that one thing that pushes you. Not all days are good, you will have a bad day more than once and it’s totally fine as no one is perfect. One important thing I learned is that you don’t just work hard to prove others but to mainly prove yourself. For me personally, it really improved my time management, self confidence, maturity and knowledge and i’ll forever be grateful for it. However, there’s still far more things and areas to improve on and there’s always going to be a continuation of progress and growth and I’m here willing to accept that and learn more.
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