Looking back on the past 11 weeks that I have spent as Skillseed’s Community Building and Business Development Intern, I am filled with a sense of gratitude of how much this place has nurtured and cared for me since I first entered. Joining Skillseed, it was my first time being an intern. Despite hearing my friends talk about their own internships, I honestly had no expectations of what being an intern entailed. So, here is a little letter to my past self from 6 September 2023, a small reflection of my Skillseed internship experience and what I have learnt!
Dear Jody,
The first lesson that you will learn is to be open-minded. As you step into the Skillseed for the first time, you will be met with waves of doubt if coming here was the right decision.
This is as you will be greeted by a mountain of decks to edit. As you sit there and watch the hours go by, you’ll realise that progress wasn’t as fast as you had expected. You’re embarrassed because you told your supervisor that editing slides are easy and shouldn’t take that long. But even worse, you will feel that you’re losing out to who you should’ve been - a second year University student. You think: even when the assignments get difficult, at least I’m reaping something out of its labour. But when you start to see how your work plays a role in the bigger picture, you realise how important that task was. More importantly, you realise that it is actually quite fulfilling to see the efforts being appreciated (and used to achieve their end goal).
Therefore, the first lesson that you will learn is to be open-minded. Looking back, it was quite ironic that I chose to come to Skillseed and yet had those doubts. Thankfully they only lasted during the start of the deck assignment and I eventually looked forward to editing them! Setting aside my self-imposed judgement made the process of seeing the value of a given task much easier. In turn, it helped me to put a little bit more of myself into the task, really making sure that I try my best and to see the task to its fullest.
The second lesson that you will learn is the power of language. While we have learnt how language subconsciously shapes our perception and bias, you saw how Skillseed wielded it to bring across many intangible positive implications. The examples range from being relational to our stakeholders to empowering the Community Guides whom we work with in Resilience Trails. Though there were moments when you felt that it could get a little bit odd (such as the use of first person pronouns in some of our marketing materials), language is a powerful tool in building the narratives of our Community Guides and the culture of Skillseed. You saw how it draws out the strengths from their stories and situations without discounting their humanhood, and soon felt the importance in the way you addressed the Community Guides, and even capitalising the term “Community Guides” quickly became natural to you.
Super delicious lunch prepared by the folks at Allkin Community @ Ang Mo Kio 643!
The third lesson that you will learn is how trust is the gift that keeps on giving. As time went on, you saw how there would be more Slack messages saying that the task will be left to you. You will get trusted with things that you have never even done before, such as editing videos and contacting potential vendors directly. With this newfound space and freedom, it was nerve-racking at the start as you didn’t wish to disappoint. Early on, you will realise half-way in the process of the work that perhaps… you didn’t ask enough questions to gain a substantial understanding of the work at hand, and you learn from it!
Trust from Skillseed also manifested in the dynamics between our team and Community Guides, as you saw how the Resilience Trails were co-created and co-led together. It was almost like watching yin and yang as they supported each other to bring the story of the Community Guides to life. You learnt that in Skillseed, trust was not something to be earned but rather, given and kept, quite different from my previous understanding.
Overall, you’ll really like your time here. And you will learn that there is a difference between NPOs and Social Enterprises… embarrassingly enough! All the best and keep checking your work, stop swearing that the mistakes magically appeared after you sent them to your poor supervisor for review!
Lots of Love,
Jody
Wednesday Crew