At last! I’m finally down to my last remaining hours in internship. I am feeling mixed emotions, happy but sad and sad but happy. I am happy because I am done with my one-year course of internship, I am sad because I’ll be departing from the place that almost felt like home. Well, goodbyes are not the end but a commencement of something new, a breath of fresh air.

The value of togetherness and camaraderie are the things that I have learned in my internship with Cebu Chamber of Commerce and Industry. The whole organization has been very successful since the day it operated until now. The success it made was through the staffs who value each other so much.

They treat each other as family. Even I as an intern was treated as “baby” in the big family they have. There were no factions even though the whole organization was bureaucratic. Each department worked hand in hand harmoniously. Although the departments have its own function, whenever they see the other department is in need of help, they without second thoughts would help as long as the other department is not busy. A great example of this is the recently concluded General Membership Meeting. GMM is the flagship activity of the Membership Department but the other departments are helping them to make the activity successful. Truly, the success of a company or the business relies on the harmonious working relationship of the people.

It has been three months and a half since I started my internship in Cebu Chamber of Commerce and Industry. Since then, I have encountered various tasks that can either make or break my day. Tasks that made me to exhaust my inner concerns and express my ideas to improve or to make a breakthrough in the tasks given. They transformed me from being silent on the first day to become talkative with the other employees whom I thought I could not talk to. Cebu Chamber enables me to grow not just as a student but as a person.

As for now, I am almost done with my internship but I am still looking forward for more learning experiences to encounter. As the famous maxim goes, never stop learning for life is a continuous learning experience.

There were new interns from other school who just started their internship with CCCI. Unlike us, they are having their internship after finishing a semester so they start their internship after second semester and they can have the whole summer period to finish their internship. With the new interns, there was a bit tingling sensation I felt and that tingling sensation was competition. But I did remind myself that there should be no competition but friendship among all the people in CCCI. I should keep in my mind to treat people in the company as family and not a competitor for the attention of another. Yet the feeling did not subside abruptly but in a slow and gradual process.

FRIENDSHIP is one of the best things that happened in my internship. I gained new friends from the other school. I became close to them for the past two (2) and a half months that we are together under the same roof. Not just that, I also got the chance to know what it’s like to be studying in their school.

COOPERATION is another thing that I learned. It is one vital element for a company to function. In the case of CCCI, staffs on the higher position do not treat those of the lower position as their subordinates yet they treat them as family. They are like one big family in a very small house sharing some common traits and experiences to laugh on. Still, authority in the office is prevalent. Respect for department heads and the executive director is still present.

LOVE FOR WORK is what keeps everybody going in a company. This is what Ma'am Maribel has been reminding us. She always stresses to us the importance of love in the work place. According to her, when one loves his or her work, he or she does not get easily exhausted and stressed. Hence, love for work gives us the endurance.

I’ve got a question and here it goes----“What do you usually do when you’ve got nothing left to do?” You may just sleep and wake up when there are things needed to be done but others would look for something that will somehow ease the boredom.

In the case of internship, I always fret for this time to come. The time when you have nothing left to do and instead of leaving the company as a choice to ease the boredom, I look for things to fix or whatever activities just to show that I am doing something. All of the staff in my department was having meetings with clients and media partners for the incoming Cebu business month. They were always out in the office and they did not left something for me to do in the office. What I did while waiting for my time to end was cutting the scratch bond papers into slips for them to write their reminders or phone call notices.

I always make sure that I will always have an output even though the staff didn’t give me some things to do. I have been trained by my office heads to never stop working although you have no work at all. According to them, an excellent employee always looks for something to be done.

During this week, my superior together with some staff are busy in meeting with their sponsors and prospect. They always went out of the office to conduct meeting with their clients about the proposal they sent. Majority of the matter being discussed in the meeting is about the merchandising rights of the sponsors in the upcoming CBM 2012. I wonder how it feels to meet big “SHITS.” (my sincerest apology for the trash word but it seems to be fitting. LOL!) They don’t just talk with the executive secretary but with the owner as well. I can imagine all the jitters they are feeling once inside the conference room. But for so many years working with CCCI I guess they have already established within them the highest degree of confidence. They’ve become stout and they can stand in dealing with executives. 

The flamboyance of the beauty and wellness industry is one focus in the celebration of Cebu Business Month. Fitness centers, spas, beauty clinics, skin clinics, cosmetic products, food supplement manufactures and the like are concerned in this industry. Various programs related to this industry are organized and offered to improve and to bring the economy of Cebu to greater heights. In relation to this, I was tasked to research on the industries concerned and what are some of the possible programs to employ to achieve these goals.

First things first, I searched on google the schemes of the neighboring countries in improving their beauty and wellness industry. I tried to looked into their programs and scrutinize each so that I will know if it’s applicable in an economic climate such as the Philippines. After a th0rough scrutiny, I consolidated all the information and arrange it according to its degree of success. Lastly, I sent all the gathered information to my direct head through e-mail.

What made me so proud of this task is the comment that I heard from my superior. According to her, I was able to do my task well. I was able to provide a very comprehensive and more than enough information from my research despite the time constraint. Truly, the task was a bit pressure because she always wanted results in an instant which I find very challenging as an intern. But with all the pressure from her, I have to always be in my senses, grace under pressure so to speak. 

Sponsorship is the life-blood of any events. I never heard of any event that doesn’t seek the help of sponsors to make it successful. Every event should have sponsors to support it or else the event would just end as good as an imbroglio. Consequently, sponsorship letters are made to make an event impeccable.

Although the advent of internet revolution have made a lot of comfort on the part of the people, the conventional ways of doing things didn’t just dissipate in the thin air. In the case of letter sending, snail mail didn’t lose track of time. Having a hard copy of the letter is apparently better than having the soft ones sent through e-mails. However, a lot of companies find it easier to send the letters through e-mail. But the traditional is way too hard than the contemporary. Such as the proper folding of the paper before it is placed inside the envelope is an example. It has to go through steps to make it presentable making sure that the company logo and the addressee are visible at all times. Jeez..! Why in the world should it have to be like that? Well, it goes to show that presentable things are always noticed. Lucky me I was the one who fold the letters and I were taught to do so.

    We have arrived on the day of the seminar. During the day, there were a lot of troubles, flaws and conflicts that we, the organizers have encountered. From the non-functioning microphones, to lacking chairs, to non-functioning LCD Projector down to late speakers, those were the conflicts that we encountered on that day. But that is what live show is always about, subject to these inevitable things. We are lucky to have our team leader who was always calm and compose person that he always reminds us that these things are normal in events such as this. The whole seminar went very well. The audience enjoyed and learned a lot about the topic. The audience didn’t waste their time and resources in joining the seminar.

    As for me, I was assigned to manually operate the flow of slides in the presentation of the speaker because the remote control for the projector was not functioning. I didn’t fell asleep while doing the job because I had fun and the talk didn’t forget to give me an AHA! experience. Truly, the seminar gave me a double luck because I enjoyed and I learned a lot from it. Aside from that, I was also the one who distributed the evaluation sheets to the audience to gauge the flow of the seminar. And ooooppppppppsssss! Didn’t I forget to mention about the food? Yeah! The food was really great. I personally look forward for things that concerns food. I wasn’t only enjoying and learning but I was getting a fully-loaded stomach at that time. oh! How I love to go back to Diamond Suites and have a lunch there all alone.

    I finished the day with an excruciating pain on my neck down to my back. It was a whole day activity and it didn’t miss to give me a back ache.  Even though I had back pains, I still treasure it and would always love to do it all again. This gave another experience that I will surely bring with me when I got myself a work. So, I’ll always keep the spirit and ADELANTE!

During my third year in college, I was able to take a course in organizing events such as seminars, symposium and the like. I even had the chance to organize such in school as part of the course requirement. The task wasn’t easy as I expected knowing I wasn’t working alone but with a team. To make things perplex, I was chosen as the captain of the team. With it, the fate of the event, be it success or failure, blame will be put on me. Thank God! It turns out to be a successful one.

Now, in my internship, I am also part of the organizing committee for organizing seminar on food safety. This is a joint project of CCCI and DOST. I am in charge of making calls to different establishments, universities etc. inviting them to join the seminar. I do follow-ups, ask feedback from them if they will or they will not attend the seminar. I am also part in making the kits for the audience that will be attending the event. Woaaahhh!!!! It’s like they hire me to become a jack-of-all-trades. Literally, I’ve been an all-around intern in the company since the day that I started to work with them. But I love the feeling of being entrusted with almost all of the important things in the company needed in its operation. Somehow, there is a feeling of exasperation on my part being an intern and at the same time being a working student. Nevertheless, I treat this ill-feeling on a lighter note. I know I will learn a lot from all these things and that will surely contribute on my future undertakings in the real world.