Information about my internship in Santiago

Hello from Santiago!

In this post, I want to talk about what I have to do at my internship. I have talked a lot about how I’ve been feeling on this trip, what activities I’ve been doing, and general thoughts about Santiago and Chile, but I haven’t focused at all about what I’m actually doing Monday-Thursday from 8:30-4:30.

I work at Asemxa Chile A.G. I don’t know what the A.G. stands for but Asexma itself stands for Asociación de Exportadores y Manufacturas, or Association of Exporters and Manufactures. I’m still a little fuzzy on what the other departments have to do every day or who exactly they work with, but Asexma forms alliances with various organizations and businesses to help provide more services for their associates.

For example, recently, Asexma created a partnership with people in the prison system in Chile in order to help them provide resources for prisoners about to be released. Asexma is going to help provide training and recruitment services so when people are leaving prison, they have the skills they need to enter the workforce. Pretty cool, huh? I went to the event that signified the start of the partnership and it was really interesting. It was at the school where people are training to become prison guards so it was super scary when we showed up and a man with the biggest gun I’ve ever seen in real life opened the gate. Then, my supervisor said something about prison and I thought we were at a prison but then I realized exactly what she said and we were all on the same page. Anyway, you can see the pictures I took at the event here.

Asexma works with a variety of organizations and in the communications department, we have to write about those alliances and go to events to take pictures and video of meetings, events, and other things like that. I’ve had the opportunity to go to the Embassy of Ecuador to take pictures (you can see those here). I went to a conference that the President of the Asexma was speaking at (you can see those pictures here) and finally, I’ve gone to individual organizations and businesses to take pictures and video as well.

In addition to taking pictures, I am also in charge of updating the Facebook and Twitter pages of Asexma as well. I use Tweet Deck and Facebook’s programming feature to schedule posts between 8:30 a.m. and 10 p.m. with news about Asexma and the economy as well. I have learned more about business than I ever thought I would. I’m not even a Kelley School of Business student but look at me now! I have a couple news sources that I read and I pick out the top stories and schedule them for the pages. It’s sometimes hard because it might be a slow news day or I might not 100% understand what the story is saying but I’m trying.

It’s interesting because there is a focus on the American economy and Wall Street in Chile and at the end of the day, they usually compare the price of copper to how the US dollar is doing. I knew there would be a focus on our economy but I didn’t realize it would be this much of a focus. Anyway, if you want to catch up on business news and practice your Spanish, follow us on Twitter and Facebook! (And I will know if you do because I see those notifications!)

My job at Asexma is exactly the job I would give someone with my background in journalism and it’s made me realize that this type of job is something I would definitely be interested having in the future. I really like being able to focus on the one organization and create content around them. I wish I was able to write more and work more with graphic design but that’s ok. One of my goals for this experience was to develop skills that would make me more marketable later on when I was looking for internships and jobs later on. With my internship with Asexma, I think that is definitely true.

My experience with Asexma is just one of the experiences you can have with the IES Internship Program. The people here in Santiago will really work hard to try to find something that you will benefit from. For some of my peers, they might not be doing exactly what they want to do but I do think they are learning as well. If you feel like your experience isn’t what you want it to be, the people at IES Abroad in Santiago will be able to talk to your supervisor for you or try to find something else for you. Just try to be flexible and hopefully things will work out!

With a little less than three weeks left in Santiago and less than 12 full days of work, overall, I’m satisfied with my experience here. The worst parts have been how sick I was for the first couple weeks and it’s definitely a struggle to have express yourself in another language. However, I am extremely happy with the opportunities I’ve had, especially at work, and I feel like I am learning every single day.

Thanks for reading!