A Trailer for the Future, by Vishwas
For most of the people that acquire their undergraduate degree from India, doing internships in the middle of your course is unheard of. I don’t know whether it is because of lack of opportunities, a general lackadaisical mentality or just wanting to enjoy your time off. But since we at S P Jain enjoy a lot during our normal semester period as well, most of us tend to do internships in the colossal 4-month break that we get every year.
At the end of my second year in Dubai, it was time for me to make my first major career decision at S P Jain, i.e. whether to take up Finance or Marketing as a major for graduation. I was inclining towards Marketing, but wanted to be sure. So I decided to do two internships, one in each field. My first Finance internship was at KPMG in Mumbai, where I worked for six weeks. I was very apprehensive before my first day of work because it was the first time I was going out into the real world, and that gave me jitters. My co-workers there knew I had very little experience in this field and they made sure I was grasping as much as I could and was comfortable in the workplace. Six weeks went by and before I could even blink, it was time for me to move on to my second internship.
To gain experience in the field of Marketing, I worked in the Employee Banking sector of Standard Chartered Bank in Mumbai for another six weeks. This internship was a really different experience from my previous one. It was more travel oriented and involved meeting new people, which, I later realized, was what Marketing was all about. It appealed a lot more to my personality, so I decided to take a leap of faith and go for Marketing as my major.
I was so engrossed in my internships in those three months that I almost forgot that I was still a college student and had two more years left to graduate. S P Jain largely helped me in being able to confidently go out into actuality, and courageously perform the tasks given to me. My professors from Dubai had a huge hand in this, and so did Prof Alesa Lightbourne whose Business Oral Communication course in my first year in Singapore was invaluable in helping me face people with an aura of confidence, branching out from the shy teenager that I was before that.
Needless to say, these two big corporates gave a huge boost to my CV, and to my self-confidence as well. I am really looking forward to getting some more experience in Sydney for my next break!
– Vishwas Pai, BBA12
