End of Internship Reflections

When I first arrived in Kolkata to begin my internship at Destiny Reflection, I told myself that I didn’t have any expectations. I was open to whatever was going to come my way, both in terms of living in a new city and working for a new organization. However, I soon came to realize that I did have expectations, even if I didn’t want to admit it to myself.

As such, this term has been a long exercise in learning to let go (admittedly not a skill I particularly good at). At work, I learned that projects were not always going to be completed efficiently or with a sense of urgency. The first few weeks at work were exciting but also incredibly frustrating and demotivating at times. The days felt long and slow, I was always eager to find tasks to fill my time. I was incredibly happy to be at Destiny Reflection though. I loved sitting and chatting with my co-workers and picking their brains about their lives in Kolkata and their knowledge of human trafficking; I learned a lot from those tea-time chats. And every day when I sat down with the women in the production unit to eat lunch with them, I knew we were becoming more and more comfortable communicating with each other.

All of this aside, I didn’t feel productive, and this lack of productivity made me feel useless. I think that growing up in Canadian society has taught me to value my worth based on what I can produce and achieve. Writing resumes filled with “action statements,” attending interviews to showcase how I can apply my “soft skills,"… I am constantly trying to sum up my value, my worth, based on what I can produce. To a certain extent this tactic works, however, there is a whole other part of learning and experience that is harder to quantify and that comes with being observant, patient, and open-minded.

Working at Destiny Reflection hasn’t just been work experience, it has been life experience. I have soaked up the work atmosphere from the caring relationships among employees, to the daily chai break, to the way that the women in the production laugh as though they don’t have a care in the world. Yes, I have written some reports and updated some marketing materials but those will not be the things that I remember most about working at Destiny Reflection, and I hope that those are not what my new friends will remember most about me. Instead, I hope they remember the art projects we collaborated on to help brighten up the office, or the time Zahra and I made pancakes with maple syrup for everyone. I hope they remember trying each other’s lunches and all the times when I tried to speak Bengali and it sort-of, kind-of made sense.

At the end of this internship, it’s challenging to summarize everything that being at Destiny Reflection and meeting these women has taught me. I don’t think anyone at the organization understands how much it has meant to be taken in as part of the family and experience their workplace, their culture, and their lives as much as I have. Similarly, I can only wonder what my fleeting three month presence at Destiny Reflection has meant to them.