A Quick Introduction About Me
My name is Selina Yang and I am from Melbourne, Australia. The land of inconceivably great coffee and unpredictable weather conditions.
I graduated from The University of Melbourne with majors in marketing and management late last year. Today marks the 11th month post completion of my degree.
I worked part-time as a Marketing Coordinator at The Arc Agency during my degree. I then worked at Elenberg Fraser full time for 6 months in a public relations and PA role.
A short 6 months later, I chose not to extend my contract. I packed a bag and made the hasty decision to pursue a 2 month MagLoft Internship in Bali.
Why a MagLoft Internship?
I remember waking up every morning during my full time work with the following thoughts:
- How many more times can I hit the snooze button before I absolutely have to get up?
- Is there anything pressing I need to do at work today? The answer was almost always no.
After hours of soul searching i.e. complaining and listening to others complain, I have come to one simple conclusion. Entry level positions are often mind boggling boring (hard fact, no statistics needed).
Don’t get me wrong, the initial stages of on boarding and training is extremely valuable for learning new skills. However,the days become overwhelmingly repetitive once you’ve adapted to the initial stages of learning.
I was constantly asking for more challenges. But found myself stuck in the position of not having enough experience to take on more complex tasks.
The reality is, many corporate companies don’t have the resources to assign someone to constantly mentor and train you for tasks outside the scope of your entry level position.
From my point of view, an internship is a way of “cheating” the system. It helps accelerate the process of stepping up the ladder faster.
An internship at a startup company is packed with a tonne more responsibility. It also provides a stronger sense of ownership that I was deprived of at my entry-level job back in Australia.
Working in a large organisation, everyone is confined into their specialised field and dedicated tasks. At a start-up, everyday is different and chaotic. You really get a taste of everything without being “boxed into” one single position.
A start-up company is constantly throwing you into deep end. And instead of drowning, you find yourself swimming in a sea of learning opportunities. Or in my case, at the Sanur beach club.
Why Bali?
This is by far one of the questions I got asked the most. When people think of Bali, they immediately picture coconuts by the beach, luxurious villas and countless girls posting photos on Instagram #bikinibody #summergoals
Not going to lie, I had the exact same picture in mind when I chose Bali as my Internship destination. It was one big excuse to escape to a tropical island and disguise quitting my 9-5 as a some-what socially acceptable reason.
However, upon hours of research, it became apparent that Bali is fast becoming one of the top start-up hubs along side San Francisco. By this point, I realised that an internship in Bali will actually help accelerate my learning curve and better equip me for a non entry level job when I return.
Without hesitation, I googled “top 10 start-up companies in Bali” and that’s where I found MagLoft. I reached out via LinkedIn after reading Christine’s blogpost about working here.
I was then offered an interview and the rest is history (and by history, I mean 3 months ago).
So here I am.
A Melbourne girl living in yet another land of unpredictable weather conditions and really terrible coffee. But that’s okay, the cool things I’m getting to do at MagLoft almost makes up for it.
Well you can decide for yourself after reading my next blogpost about my MagLoft internship experience.