I am a Political Science and History student entering my final year at 捆绑SM社区. This summer, I did a remote internship with Asia Centre, a think tank based in Paris, France. Asia Centre is an organization that fosters discussions between researchers, policy makers and other actors on the important political issues in Asia, while also publishing articles on its website that discuss a variety of topics linked to these issues. I am very happy to have been able to complete this internship since, throughout my degree, I have always been very interested in International Relations and this internship provided me with a great opportunity to further explore issues related to International Relations.
During the internship, I performed a variety of tasks, but my main responsibility was running the website and uploading all new articles. This meant that I had a good overview of Asia Centre鈥檚 activities, as I was able to read all of the material that was published while I was there. I also kept a daily watch on Asian news, to help keep researchers associated with Asia Centre up to date with the latest developments. I was notably tasked with doing some research on the development of China鈥檚 central bank digital currency and finance in the Philippines. On a few occasions during the internship, I was tasked with attending online meetings with researchers associated to Asia Center in which they discussed issues like the protests in Hong Kong and the COVID-19 pandemic. During these discussions, I was responsible for taking notes to write up a meeting report. I feel that this was the most interesting part of the internship for me, as the discussions were all very interesting and informative. While I performed most of these tasks alone, I did also have to work with a team in some cases. Indeed, M. Di Meglio, the head of Asia Centre asked me and the other interns to try and promote the website and make it more visible. To do this, we worked together to promote the center on social networks and create a newsletter in English and French.
Because of the COVID-19 pandemic, I had to conduct this internship remotely, with the added complication of the time difference between Canada, France and Asia, since I had to contact people in all of these areas at different points. In the end, I was able to overcome this challenge by adapting my schedule according to what needed to be done. I generally tried to get as much as possible done in the morning, to maximize the amount of overlap with Paris鈥� daytime. When it came to contacting people, I used email or Zoom and never had any issues with either one. Another issue with working remotely was the lack of a physical contact with my coworkers or a dedicated space to work in. The technology that I mentioned earlier was helpful for overcoming these issues to a certain extent, but the factor that was the most helpful was keeping to a specific routine each day. This helped me stay concentrated on my job and was an important factor in successfully completing this remote internship.
Overall, I feel that this internship has been very beneficial to me, as it has helped me to gain valuable work experience in the domain of policy analysis and get a better understanding of how think tanks like Asia Centre work. I believe that the unusual conditions of my internship, caused by the combination of the COVID-19 pandemic and the multiple time zones that I had to deal with also helped me to improve my ability to work independently while coordinating with others even when doing so can be complicated. It showed me the value of having a routine, which is something that I am sure will help me in the future. The experience of coordinating with the other interns on group tasks was particularly important as it allowed me to significantly improve my teamwork skills in an environment that did not make it particularly easy to coordinate.
I am not receiving credit for this internship, but I did receive funding from the Arts Internship Office, and I am very thankful to Mr. Toten for providing this funding under the Toten Family Arts Internship Award. This money was very important to me as it helped pay for my rent and other expenses over the summer and I would probably not have been able to do this extremely enriching but unpaid internship otherwise.
