I decided to start working at Accelerating Asia as a way to keep myself busy during the summer. I completed by IB final exams in May, as well as Grade 12. I was worried that during the period of time between finishing school and starting university, I would become lazy, lose passion and focus. So, I explained my feelings to my mother the very night I graduated. She was able to get my in contact with Accelerating Asia, and I was kindly offered an internship, three days after finishing exams.

As of now, I’ve been working here for over a month and as of yet I’ve learned plenty of things in a wide range of fields. At first I was tasked with things that are normally expected of interns; errands, pickups, helping with logistical issues and essentially being an extra pair of hands to help around the office with all sorts of issues. Shortly after, I was tasked with helping organize a company program in which students from the University of Queensland would be working as interns for the startups in the current cohort. This made me pretty excited because doing these tasks allowed me to interact with people closer to my age group (older than me by two or three years), in a moderately semi-formal working environment.

What this meant for me was that I would need to look at all the documentation and information provided by each of the students’ applications, and find them a suitable startup to pair up with. The most challenging part of this was trying to keep everyone happy, and this was an inherent issue due to a high demand of students with skills in a certain field, and a large supply of students with skills in other fields. Through this experience, I was able to learn the skill of being professional when responding to the complaints that came through.

However after some changing and rearranging, I was able to get each student paired with a startup, and they arrived on the morning of Sunday 23rd of June, where I went to pick them up at Changi Airport, and take them all safely to their temporary dorms at NUS. I was a little stressed out trying to organize the transport for the students, and unfortunately the first bus that I booked cancelled on me. However since I was there with 20+ university students who I didn’t know, I couldn’t afford to lose my cool, and I needed to stay relaxed and smart about the situation. So I ended up booking two smaller buses to take the students to the dorms. When we got to NUS, I helped the students get the keys to their rooms and once I knew they were all safely settled in, I went back home pretty satisfied with my performance.

On top of this I’ve done various other tasks, from helping with financing to making a video for the Accelerating Asia website, helping visitors learn how to make their way to the office from Telok Ayer MRT (check out the video guide that I’ve created). It’s been an interesting experience so far and I look forward to where it takes me in the future.