"A piece of Latin America in Vienna"
Marta Lopes talks about her internship at the Latin America Institute in Vienna
As I started the university course "Latin American Studies" at the Austrian Institute of Latin American Studies in March 2013, it made sense for me to do a one-month internship there in the summer to gain an insight into the various areas of work at the institute and to get to know them better.
During my internship, I was mainly responsible for the reception and language areas of the institute. This meant that I offered personal and telephone customer support and advice and often also answered various inquiries via email. My multilingual skills helped me here, as I did this not only in German, but also in Spanish, Portuguese and English. I see the institute as a multilingual and multicultural place with a Latin American flair, where you always meet different people from different countries. It is as if "a piece of Latin America" is present in Vienna, which awakens a great desire to travel in me every time.
I noticed time and again that as the contact person at reception, the first point of contact at the institute, I was integrated into various conversations. From time to time, I had informal discussions with the language trainers (native speakers) about economic, political and cultural aspects of their respective countries of origin (Spain and Latin America) in a relaxed atmosphere.
Another task was to register customers for language courses. You had to be very stress-resistant, especially during the "hot" registration phases, because several people often came into the institute at the same time and either wanted to register shortly before the course started, buy the course book or find out in which room their course was taking place. But I was lucky enough to get 100% support from my great, helpful colleagues, so that no customer had to worry about long waiting times. As they say, "everything runs like clockwork" when you get great commitment from the whole team.
Another very positive aspect is that you could always go to any colleague with any question and you were always helped with a smile. I really appreciated my colleagues, because working in a family atmosphere in which colleagues became friends that I still like to visit today when I pass by the institute is not something that can be taken for granted.
I really enjoyed the internship because I had a great time with the nice and funny colleagues who warmly welcomed me into their team. During this time, I was able to acquire various qualifications and skills and also deepen some of them. For example, I was able to demonstrate my content-related and organizational skills, my ability to work in a team and my independent and efficient way of working by taking on the following tasks, among others: Updating and researching data, handling databases and course software, assisting with mailings.
I would like to thank everyone at the Institute for the wonderful time during which I was able to learn so much!
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