My internship was at Literaturwerkstatt Berlin. I mainly helped out with the ZEBRA poetry film festival by entering the application forms of contestants into a data bank, composing folders for the program commission, corresponding with the filmmakers, and, finally, editing or writing the English summaries for the films which will be shown at the festival, as well as translating the German summaries to English. I learned a great deal at this internship. I got a feeling for the character of German workplaces, although I think that the Werkstatt is unconventional in many ways.

Over the course of a three-month period during the summer semester I was fortunate enough to work at the American Academy in Berlin, a non-profit organization that promotes German-American cultural ties. I was tasked with a broad range of duties, including translation, event management, and research. Given the unique bilingual environment I was often required to switch between English and German at a moment’s notice, and provide instantaneous translations to visiting guests during lectures and presentations. I thoroughly enjoyed the demanding nature of working at a unique cultural juncture and found the work to be both intellectually stimulating and enriching. The opportunity to employ my German skills in a professional setting was also an invaluable asset in the broader context of my study abroad experience as it enabled me to cultivate a field-specific vocabulary. For the aforementioned reasons I would most certainly recommend the internship to any interested Middlebury students, and consider my time at the academy to be one of the high points of my study abroad experience.

For the summer semester of my year abroad in Berlin I interned for ArtPod, a non-governmental art organization that curates contemporary art for a mixed aged audience. I joined the team right after their first exhibition “Imaginäre Reisen” at Amerikahaus Berlin. However, that did not mean that I missed out on all the fun: there was still a lot to do! I oversaw the sending of the exhibition catalogues to artists and other media contacts; through personal visits the workshops and galleries that I had an overview of Berlin’s existing contemporary art scene. I researched potential artists for the future projects and was amazed by the variety and richness in Europe’s art scene. As time progresses I learnt to recognize artworks that are attuned to ArtPod’s vision. I also researched and wrote to art education programs in Germany and around the world to situate the role of ArtPod in the field, and to further possibilities and development opportunities for ArtPod’s future projects. On the administrative front, I translated texts, updated the contacts database and worked on tax- and accounts-related paperwork. My experience at ArtPod is truly multifaceted!

The organization I worked for, zbMATH, is an online indexing and reviewing service for math papers, books, and other such publications. A lot of what I did there was related to management of the database of publications and reviews. I worked on various projects, including:

• managing proper input of names in a new data field;
• disambiguating names;
• categorizing errors in series and issue numbers in the database;
• making new versions of various forms used internally and externally in LaTeX, an upgrade compared to their old TeX forms; and
• preparing zbMATH‘s internal romanization of the Cyrillic alphabet for publication on their website.

Most of these projects took 2-6 days of full time work to complete. I was given more or less complete control over when I worked, as long as I fulfilled Middlebury‘s requirements. My projects were all individual, but they came from various employees, so I was sending results to multiple people over the course of my time there. This variety kept things fresh and interesting. Overall I was very pleased with the internship and am quite thankful for the experience.

This semester, I spent 2-3 days a week interning at OASE Berlin e.V, a local nongovernment organization committed to helping immigrants and refugees achieve independence and to creating a more integrated and welcoming community. I chose this internship because I have a deep academic, personal, and career interest in migration and asylum in Germany, and because OASE’s ideals match my own. We believe that integration is a two-sided process, and that newcomers in our community deserve respect, dignity, and a chance to make a new life for themselves. OASE does this with emphasis on four areas: consulting (Beratung), socialization (Begegnung), education (Bildung), and engagement (Beteiligung). I participated in several projects that fell under the category of “socialization,” which mostly meant planning and promoting events such as workshops, meetups, and a festival for families and children. Besides that, I worked at the reception, greeting clients who came for social and legal advice and supporting my colleagues in their consulting. I learned how to collaborate with a diverse team of people from all over the world, and to navigate the linguistic, cultural, and emotional challenges involved in working with advice-seeking immigrants and refugees. I’m extremely grateful to have had the opportunity to be part of the OASE family, and will carry the lessons I learned throughout the rest of my life and career.

During my spring semester in Berlin, I interned at an important gallery in Berlin, Esther Schipper. It was an exciting moment to intern there: the gallery was moving from one exhibition space to another, going from one art fair to the next and preparing for the summer art events like the documenta, the Venice Biennale and the Münster Skulptur Projekt. The gallery has generally been growing exponentially since its merge with another Berliner gallery in 2015. Amidst all of these events, I got to see what it really meant to work for a gallery that size: the different jobs and tasks it takes to make everything run smoothly. As someone studying art history, working at an art gallery is something I never excluded and I am happy I got to see this world from the inside. I had various tasks, some boring and some interesting. The most interesting to me was asking people around me where they came from as well as how they got and for what reasons they were here. I learned as much about the gallery world as about myself, how I saw myself in that world and about German cultural standards at the workplace. As much as I enjoyed that experience, I admit it also had its challenges: working in German can be difficult and it is sometimes difficult to balance work, classes and all the other things Berlin has to offer, but I don’t regret it at all–it was absolutely worth it.

An internship at the American Academy in Berlin is an extremely rewarding experience. The Academy is a privately funded institution that fosters cultural exchange between the US and Germany. It accomplishes this mission through hosting a diverse group of American scholars for a semester at a time, who share their projects with the public in Berlin, as well as offering a variety of events that engage with current topics and through the Richard C. Holbrooke Forum, which hosts workshops that bring together an international group of experts to discuss topics connected to statecraft and diplomacy. The American Academy staff is diverse and passionate about the Academy’s mission. The Richard C. Holbrooke Forum’s primary mission is hosting workshops, but also offers other events such as lectures and film screenings. As an intern with the Holbrooke Forum I had the opportunity to gain insight into how these events are planned and organized. A great amount of hard work goes into the preparation and execution of an event, which requires a strong team who works together. I consider myself fortunate to have had the guidance of the Holbrooke Forum team and to assist in the Forum’s spring events. My experience at the Academy has helped me in figuring out what I might want to do as possible future career.

I am a Studio Art major and German Language and Literature double major from Wellesley College. Therefore I decided to look for other opportunities in Berlin that would allow me to practice hands on art using a variety of mediums. For the past three months I worked with artist Rainer Warzecha restoring the “Lehmdorf” (clay village) which is a playground made out of natural and sustainable materials located in Britzer Garten, a public park in Berlin. Rainer Warzecha was eager to take me on as an assistant in order to restore different clay and wooden structures in the park that had not only been damaged throughout the past decade by weather but also suffered the normal wear and tear at the hands of its young visitors. I worked with clay, paint, and wood to restore those objects that had suffered weather damage that both made the sculptures less aesthetically pleasing but more worrying also threatened the integrity of the structures. After working with Mr. Warzecha in my unpaid internship, I was offered a paid position on his team for the summer “Bauprojekt” sculpture/building project, which takes place annually at the Lehmdorf in Britzer Garten. Over the course of five weeks during the summer break another sculptural playground element will be built in the Lehmdorf. Children are encouraged to take part in the building process, as well as the additional artistic events and activities that take place on the weekends.

The internship at the ZEBRA Poetry Film Festival at Haus für Poesie is an opportunity to assist the content production and archiving for the short film festival. Job responsibilities include organizing/archiving past and current film entries, researching information about the submitted films, communicating with filmmakers, etc. There are also opportunities to be part of other events hosted by Haus für Poesie, such as the annual poesiefestival.

For me the internship was one of the highlights of my study abroad experience. It provided me with a lot of opportunities to be exposed to conversational German. Despite the occasionally repetitive work tasks, I always felt that I was working for something I had genuine interest in. The people I met there were all friendly, professional and very encouraging.

For three months during my time in Berlin I worked as an intern for the House of Democracy and Human Rights (Haus der Demokratie und Menschenrechte).  Throughout my internship I engaged completely in German, both speaking and writing, and worked directly next to my boss, Sarah Ernst.  Not only did I learn the many cultural differences between an American and German work environment, but I also directly contributed to the foundation instead of grabbing coffee or filing papers.  My main task was to translate the entire website into English, a job that widened my German vocabulary and directly helped the company.  I am looking forward to seeing my contribution on the website this summer.  This internship helped me further integrate into German society and culture and helped further my career interest in NGO work.

At the beginning of the break between winter and summer semester, I began a four-month, for-credit internship at the Berlin non-profit Über den Tellerrand. Über den Tellerrand is an organization that facilitates the cultural exchange between refugees and locals, most often through cooking events. They also have a project that focuses on helping refugees enter the job market and a project that focuses on helping connect young refugees with young Berliners through weekly meet-ups. I worked primarily in the community events and communication teams, where my tasks consisted of organisation of community events, community management support, participation and organization of internal meetings, social media, and translation for the website. I spent a lot of time at the public and cost-free events, interacting with people from all over the world and enjoying delicious food of every cuisine. The non-profit operates as a holacracy, meaning that there is no systematic hierarchy and all decisions are met democratically, which I found to be incredibly refreshing and inspiring. I felt that I was a valued member of the organization, and I was so impressed by the hard work and dedication of my coworkers.

I completed a 3-month internship at the Leibniz Gymnasium in Potsdam in which I had the opportunity to observe the teaching methods and structure of the school by following a ninth-grade class through their weekly classes. I was welcome to visit other classes as well, which I took advantage of often during my internship, however, observing the same students throughout their daily school life allowed me to make observations and reflect on the experience of individual students that I could not even make as a full-time secondary education teacher. My specific interest was in observing how the school supported its DaZ (German as a Second Language) students at both the structural and individual classroom level. The educators and staff at the school were welcoming and willing to answer any questions I had, and I was able to take away many new reflections for my own pedagogical practices.