Intern: Federica Esposito
Endless steps
Unexpected events just around the corner
Uncertainty
But a clear idea in mind
Strong values to guide you and ground you
Finally hitting turning points in your professional journey
This is what the complex transition from student to professional feels like.
Where I started
The transition from student to young professional can be difficult and not straightforward, especially if you haven’t exactly followed a linear path. Everybody has an opinion about what you should and shouldn’t do, and all these interferences make listening to your true, authentic self harder and harder. Adding to that, as obvious as it may be, our personal background and initial conditions play an important role and make a big difference in our future trajectory.
Building a professional career is not easy — especially when you’re a young adult finishing your master’s degree, living abroad, trying to work in the field you’ve always dreamed of, a field you have studied for years to enter. In my case, not only have I been studying for the past five and a half years to fulfill my dream, but I’ve also worked, travelled, experienced, and moved abroad, all with a clear goal in mind and clear values to guide me and ground me when things get difficult. Despite the uncertainty that naturally comes with this phase of life, I deeply believe that when you have passion, direction, and determination, and you combine them with a smart and intentional strategy, things are very likely to turn out well. Sometimes, the way you wanted them to be, more often, even better. With these convictions, I started my journey at CUE, enthusiastic to finally put into practice the subjects I’ve chosen to study for the past 5 years.
IMAGE: My work set-up at the library
For this reason, my internship at CUE was a very intentional choice, strongly purpose-driven, since it aligns perfectly with my values and with the topics I want to work with.
IMAGE: Notes from our training with Raeanne
IMAGE: Notes from our webinar with Rutgers
What am I gaining?
Entering CUE for my internship experience, I found an extremely welcoming team, a work environment that always supports our self-development, reactive to our necessities, present and grounded. I am developing a network, fostering connections, strengthening knowledge, and most importantly, I am cultivating skills and gaining experience: in other words, I am learning to do things practically. But it goes further than that. This experience at CUE is shaping my way of thinking, within the topics we deal with, but also with regards to the way I work, and to the way I wanna work. I am gaining insights about project management, which is shaping the way I organize my work. The tasks I am carrying out reflect precisely the kind of skills I am interested in developing. They range from research and social media strategy to communication, dissemination, interviewing, facilitating sex education workshops, and deepening my knowledge of sexual consent and communication within relationships, which also impacts my personal life. The effects of this experience on me are thus threefold: professional, academic and personal.
CUE’s work environment truly represents the kind of professional setting I’ve always pictured myself in: rooted in continuous learning, flexible yet task-oriented. Indeed, upskilling here is very encouraged, through constant training with other valuable and highly skilled professionals and through individual research process and reflection. As a naturally curious person, it allows me to feel like I am really developing myself and my potential, as well as allowing me to feel inspired in my daily tasks and towards my bigger goals.
However, if on one hand the multifacetedness of this experience is enriching me and getting me closer to my dream and to the person I want to be, on the other one it is also making me feel overstimulated from time to time, because I realize how much I still have ahead of me, to really become as skilled as I’d like and to reach my goals professionally. Growth doesn’t happen if you stay comfortable, and challenging yourself is essential to evolve, professionally and personally. My internship at CUE is giving me the possibility to step out of my comfort zone, carrying out daily tasks that are new for me and that I often need to learn from scratch – for instance, building a social media strategy plan and creating social media posts. It is also giving me the opportunity to discover myself more. During one of our training sessions I also had the possibility to try the Intimacy IQ Test, an innovative tool designed by CUE. It enabled me to self-reflect, deeper than usual — and I am already quite introspective as a person — and get in touch with parts of me I don’t usually connect with. It sheds light on some dynamics that we all encounter and yet, we don’t really think about them, even if they affect us constantly.
CUE is helping me to reach my ideal self and the life I’ve always dreamt about, and it definitely represents a milestone in my path, which combines perfectly professional skills and aspirations with my academic background and practice. I feel very grateful to CUE’s founders, Xixi and Raeanne, for trusting me, sharing with me their know-how and giving me the opportunity to finally put into practice what I studied for years.
I am three weeks into my internship now, and I don’t feel like I have arrived: I’ve just started.
However, I am more aware of how much I still have to learn, of what I truly want, and the path to reach it feels clearer in my mind. At least, it feels clearer which steps I should take to continue my professional journey after this internship. I can finally say that I am no longer waiting to become the professional I’ve always dreamed of; I am practicing being one.
IMAGE: The Rutgers webinar we took part to
