Expectations vs. Reality of new internship

With a first internship comes a lot of anxiety about what to expect and what will you get from the internship, especially in an agency. I want to talk about my personal expectations and realities of my internship in an advertising agency. When I walked in the office, I expected to have tons of workshops constantly, or have the work constantly given to me. However, in reality, the agency has a lot of ebbs and flow, and with this comes either a lot of work or none at all. Some days I have projects that I am working 2 weeks, 8 hours 2 times a week (those are the time slots I am in my agency), some days I am not working on media planning/actual work, but helping in the office. I had a lot of questions and a lot of confusions at the beginning, because I wasn’t familiar with the norms in the office and how the agency processes work. But I would recommend to work on your own work/processes while you are not given any work (if you initially asked your team and they say that they don’t have any work for you), ask reception, ask for some house stuff, because while you may not work on your hard skills, you may work on your interpersonal skills. Your work should be from different sides. It might happen, so don’t feel discouraged or down. It is not because they don’t remember you, but because they are working on something that they cannot give to you.

On the other side, sometimes you may be given a lot of work from one person, and then the other person will ask you to help them too. Don’t take on too much. Politely decline the second person, telling them that as soon as you are going to be done, you will help them. It will give them an idea that you are busy, while showing them that you cannot help them right now.

I would say, have your expectations, but be realistic. Expectations give you an idea what you want to reach. However, don’t be daydreaming, because if you set your expectations high, they might break by the reality, especially if it is your new internship.