My internship in Boston: Working under pressure and visiting Canada for the very first time

Dear readers,

I hope you are doing well and that you are enjoying the beginning of spring. I have to admit that as I am writing this blog entry I am currently on my way back from Canada.

Myself and the two other interns thought that it would be a great idea to visit Montreal. Little did we know that March is apparently not late enough in the spring for the weather to be warm. I have just experienced one of the coldest weekends I could possibly imagine…

Despite the freezing weather, Montreal is a really pretty city, with a lot of French and European background.

This weekend away was really appreciated, as the past couple of weeks have been really overwhelming at work. I have been experiencing a lot of pressure I have been working under really strict deadlines. I have been struggling to manage all the expectations this week. This week was for me an opportunity to experience a type of work that I always try to avoid personally as I do not enjoy working under such pressure. I realised that I am someone that likes to have time to prepare and plan my work according to a deadline so I don’t have to work against the clock. I do think that this type of work is rushed and as such, I am not I am working at the best of my capabilities as I feel more pressured and my focus isn’t fully on the quality but more on completion the task. I am someone that likes to have projects completed to the best of my knowledge and capabilities and to achieve those results I usually like to spend time on the details and presentation. I think that those are qualities of my work and my personality.

I take pride in my work and I believe that to able to continue to work at the best of my abilities, I will have to learn how to separate my work life and my personal life. To help me in this transition, I have been talking to my friends but also been doing some readings on how I can improve the situation. During my research, I came across an article from The American Psychological Association (http://www.apa.org, 2017) that helped me to understand some of the reasons I haven’t felt well over the past couple of weeks. The article also suggests steps to help manage and overcome some of the effects of stress; some of the points that I really feel I could put into practice are the following: (1) Establish boundaries: such as removing work emails from my phone, this should help me to separate work from my personal life as I won’t be available to check my emails 24 hours a day but just from work; (2) develop a healthy response – I have noticed that when I get stress I tend to turn to food or fall into my own world and in those cases reject help offered by friends to help me feel better; I need to find healthier habits. I usually work out a lot but when I get stress, I tend to put working out on the side, I now realise that I should keep working out and go twice if needed.

I know that this thought process is just the beginning of what I need to do to help myself in stressful work weeks, but to me it is the first steps of accepting that I need to accept help, need to actively help myself and that the conditions need to change for me to be able to work at the best of my capabilities.

This is challenging, however: a good way for me to learn and analyse my work type once again.