Working in web development.
In France, we have mandatory internships as part of our curriculum. A 4-month internship in 4th year and a 6-month internship in 5th year. But as I am very motivated to learn and grow, I have started looking for internships to occupy my summer vacations during my 3rd year.
I didn't have any precise goals for what I wanted to do. I just wanted to learn and grow. So I applied to a lot of companies in Europe, particularly in Norway.
Crazy enough, DNB, the largest financial group in Norway, thought it was a good idea to hire a random French student for a summer internship. I was extremely happy to accept the offer and headed to Oslo for the summer. There, I worked on the development of a web application to configure DNB's chatbots. I used React, Redux, and Styled Components for the frontend. Deployed the application on AWS S3 and CloudFront. Automated the deployment process using GitLab CI/CD pipelines.
After coming back to France, I realized how lucky I was to have this opportunity and how great it was to work there. Even if it was a 9/10 internship, I wanted to try something else to see if it was possible to do better.
Due to the hard labor market and my lack of network, I didn't have any other opportunity for my 4-month internship in my 4th year. So I decided to go back to DNB for another four-month internship. Before contacting my manager, I was a little bit worried that they would say no, but they were happy to have me back. I was so excited to head back there, as it is truly a dream internship, even if I had other goals in mind.
I have a precise goal of what I want for my 6-month internship in my 5th year, but I won't say it here in case you are a recruiter from another company reading this. I am also open to any kind of opportunity, so it doesn't matter that much.