What is the set up of internship while experiencing this pandemic? In this country, Philippines, we are still in the online mode of learning. It is really hard thinking that we need to experience to learn through online. As a Bachelor of Public Administration student, it is truly much better if we can see how the people in the Municipality or office are doing while having work. It will give us the right knowledge and experience of how it feels working after we graduated. However, due to pandemic, we are struggling to set up a face to face class. So our professors and the faculty staffs of our department had a meeting on how we can learn on the online set up.
On the first week of our online internship, we had first the orientation of what we will do. So they are planning to make us attend to webinar and online session of the government in local and national using the parliamentary procedure. After attending those, we are required to write a reflection paper following the questions that will be given of our professors. Attending different webinars also help us to enhance our knowledge on different aspects and topics. It also benefit us because we can put it to our resume or curriculum vitae. During our first, we also did making curriculum vitae for our work and make an update to it when attend to webinar. At first, it was really hard for us to do the reflection paper because we need to write in 5 pages paper for 4 to 5 hours only. We need to construct our own sentences so we are really lost of words of what to write and prolong our sentence. We also experience there to skip our lunch and to have dinner late. We are attending the webinar or session from 8am until 12 pm or sometimes until afternoon. Then we have to make reflection paper from 1pm or 5pm then consume our time until evening. We need to set our eyes that long using our devices. That is why before attending the internships , I will take a bath first so that my eyes will not be affected if I will do it after using the device for that long.
But as time goes by doing the reflection paper all over again. I realized then that my writing skill is also having an improvement. I also enhance my active listening, reading comprehension, analytical and leadership skills. There are lots of things I learned from the webinar that we attended. It talks about experience in life, management that we can use to our work and also what is happening to our country. Attending the session of senate also enhance my knowledge not just what is happening yo our country, but also the process when they are making laws. It shows how time and effort they give when criticizing the law that they need to implement. It also opened my eyes to see how knowledgeable the other senator in the government but some are not that good. We learned their characteristics and how they can handle those kind of situation. Although we didn’t experience having the internship face to face, we still have the ways to learn online. For me, it didn’t just helped me to gain knowledge on different things but help me to look forward on the things that I might experience when we have the work. The time pressure that our professor gave to us helped me to enhance my time management and to focus more on what is important. And that we need to do first the most important and the hardest so when it comes to the easy one, there is still enough time. Honestly at first, I really have full of complaints and rants to our professor at that time and I see how inconsiderate she is compare to the other section. But at least, it opened me what attitude she really have.
During those times, I am really proud to my classmates who need to attend the internship while having work. My professor give them the chance to at least pass the requirements late but with a deduction to their score so it won’t be unfair for those that pass it on time. But at least, they still have the score and can still pass the subject. Luckily, I don’t need to experience that so it really made me shy when I am complaining while them needs to experience that.
But, having the internship online while at home gives us lots of struggles. We need to deal with our mom who is asking us to do the house chores or we need to buy somethings to the store. Especially me that is the eldest child and I need to do the chores at home because my siblings also need to deal with their module. However, they understand me for having loads of activities that need to be done that is why they sometimes do the chores that I need to do. I am really looking forward that we can fully experience not having active cases and can able to back to normal life. I really miss my classmates and hanging out with them after class.