Getting into the final weeks
Every story will end sometimes… and it looks like mine is going to end pretty soon. A good time to take a moment and look back on my adventure. The amount of new people I’ve met or all the new things I’ve learned is absolutely insanew. If you move to New York on your own, the city will definitely teach you things!
Lifestyle
Living in New York is extremely expensive. Every time I’m leaving my apartment room, I’m sure I’ll lose money. Yes! It’s that crazy here in the city. Going outside on my own was not one of my favorite things to do here. This is one of the main reasons why I entered a volleyball league. (Another reason is that I just like to play volleyball as well). I got put into a random team of 10 people and poof: 9 new friends for me! The league itself was just a fun league. So most of my team members never played volleyball before. I didn’t subscribe myself to play intense volleyball so I didn’t mind. We played one game a week for 10 weeks and after each game received cheap drinks in one of the sponsoring bars. Great success!
Another good thing I had during my stay was a fun roommate! A very kind, 26-year old Chinese journalist. I spend most of my weekends with her doing tourist things or going for lunch or dinner. She followed a journalism class here in New York, so she also had a lot of classmates she met up with. This was also nice for me, because this was another way for me to meet new people here in the city.
The Night Owl Trips
Every month we try to do a teambuilding activity with our company. Sometimes this is going to a restaurant, singing some karaoke or just hanging out at someone’s apartment. But we also did a lot of trips outside the city. In the six months I was here, I went on a ski-trip, a camping trip and a visit to beach of Maryland. All our trips are just for the weekend, but lots of fun guaranteed!
The ski trip was immediately in the first week I started at Night Owls. This was quite funny because I just landed in New York and I’m going on a ski trip with 10 people I don’t know. Wel.. I knew they were my colleagues, I just never met them before. After the ski trip we went to the beach in Maryland for a weekend. Also a whole adventure for someone who doesn’t know anything about Maryland. But apparently it’s a vacation destination of a lot of New York students.
The last trip we did was a camping trip. Sleeping in tents, swimming in the lake, barbecuing and drinking all day, … You may guess if it was fun or not 😉
Professional Skills
I knew I was raising my bar quite high when I applied to Night Owls, but the level of perfection they deliver simply unique. In school you learn technologies on a basic level so you know all these technologies and methods exist. You can start specializing yourself in one of those techniques on your own, but you will never learn as much as you actually start interning in a company.
Definitely in a company like Night Owls, where I received projects like Columbia Neurosurgery (One of the best schools in the world) and Thasos Group (Winner of best overall buy-side product and product of the year – 2017 by WatersTechnology). If I can work on products like those, I’m really happy I chose to move to New York for my internship!
