Preparing for the future, first with marketing

My name is Maria Meirabova and I’m from Russia. I am currently studying at EF Academy Torbay, and this summer I got the opportunity to do a two week marketing internship at the Russian EF office in Moscow.  It’s been a pleasure to work at EF. I met and worked with a lot of new people. It was an enjoyable experience and a great opportunity for me to practice and develop new skills. It fits perfectly, as I am planning to study Marketing Management at university. I believe that it’s difficult for students to choose what they want to study at university, as they want to find something that will be bringing not only money, but also joy. From my point of view, doing an internship is an amazing chance to try the course you chose to study at university, before applying. Then you can decide if is truly something you want to do.

During my internship I got a lot of tasks; I worked with clients, translated articles, promoted the school, did presentations and independent market research. The first task I got from my supervisor was to check the EF website for errors. This involved translating articles from English into Russian and making sure that all the links worked. Some of the tasks were easier than others, for example, I found working with Excel to be quite challenging, but at the same time very useful, as I learned new Excel tools that I didn’t know before. Occasionally, I sat at reception, answered calls and welcomed people. At the beginning, it was a little bit confusing, and somewhat challenging, but after the second time, I became more confident and started enjoying it. One of the other tasks I was given to do was market research and also university research to find out which Russian universities accept the IB and A-level programs.

One of the things that I found most exciting, was participating in pre-departure online presentation for new EF Academy students. I was very happy to be able to answer their questions, give some useful tips, as well as tell them about all the wonderful things and events that have been happening at our school in Torbay. At the end, I planned and prepared a presentation for a webinar that I am going to do soon. I will be talking about all the different programs offered at EF Academy, and give an overview of what is it like to be an international student. I am really looking forward to it because I love our school, and I want more people to know how wonderful it is to study there. I really enjoyed doing this internship. I found it interesting and it reassured me about choosing the right path for my future career. I am even thinking about coming back to work for EF when I finish university.

I want to say a huge thank you to all of EF Academy and the Marketing team, especially to my managers Maria Kislova and Nina Kryuchkova. And to all the amazing people that I have had pleasure to work with! Thank you!