My experience
A short-term experience from UQ enables us to travel to other part of the world to experience the culture as a “local”, as we will be staying at the hosting country for at least 3 weeks. I decided to participate in the 6-week Jakarta Internship as, firstly, I can gain real-life working experience at a local organisation in Jakarta; Secondly, I can gain credits from the internship; And finally, I will be able to travel to a city that I have never been to, and to live there for 6 weeks.
How has the experience changed you?
I would not say I have significant growth academically, as this is an internship instead of doing academic courses at other University like most of the short-term experiences. However, I learned a lot through the experience by interning in Jakarta. Interning at a company means that you have to solve problems that you may not have faced before, so what I have learned most in this internship is to take initiative to ask questions and seek help if needed. I have also learned from the Indonesians about their optimism and the hope towards the future even though their current situation is sometimes not as good when compared to most Australians.
Favourite memory
I would say it’s the complimentary weekend trips to the Thousand Islands and Bandung. Three interns from UQ, together with our “buddies” from BINUS University (our partner University), and some other interns from Sydney and Melbourne went to the tourist places and spent a weekend at each of the places mentioned above. On the other hand, one of my tasks at work also surprised me a lot, I went to a local school to assist delivering an AFL session to the kids. I was impressed by how the children from a very basic area become so energised and happy by just touching a football. This made me not only want to spend more time to play with them, but also to empower them, so to enable them to improve their quality of life
Top tips
Try not only spend time at the office, but to go out of the office if possible, to look around the city. Try to immerse into this amazing city, live in the way how the locals live, go on a motorbike/scooter (GrabBike or GoJek) with a mask on, and make good use of every single opportunity that is given to you.