A Look Inside Patricia Tanglao’s Internship Life in Prague

Internship Site: B-Hub Prague
Internship City: Prague
Internship Term: Fall 2019
Home University: University of San Diego   
Major(s): Marketing 
Year in School: Senior 

Patricia is a marketing intern at B-Hub Prague, where she specifically works on improving a wellness app called Bemmerse. The app focuses on the usage of ASMR techniques, which include a variety of auditory recordings, as a useful tool for relaxation and stress reduction. Though ASMR is commonly thought of as amusing in pop culture, Patricia’s work aims to highlight its ability to improve mental well-being. She creates additional content that is featured on the app and tracks the social media to strategically increase the number of app users.

Having this internship was important for Patricia because she decided to change her major to marketing in the middle of her college career. She was studying biology, but took a turn because of her family’s business. She grew up with an entrepreneurial mother and came to understand why their business was so important. She saw the opportunity to potentially take over the business in the future, and wanted to be sure to improve their lacking marketing techniques.

The internship is helping Patricia grow professionally, since it is the first experience she has had directly related to marketing in a company. She was not able to do this in the past because she had to take jobs in other fields to pay for her everyday living expenses at school. Her internship is also a great addition to her study abroad experience that helps her grow personally. Patricia planned to go abroad because it helped her get out of her comfortable bubble. She was very used to being with her family because she emigrated from the Philippines with them at a young age. She stayed with them until she decided to transfer from a community college to a bigger university. The transition gave her the first taste of what it was like to live outside of her culture. She realized that there was more to learn and wanted to change her lifestyle.

As Patricia has continued to learn and try different things while being in a foreign place, she has realized her limits. Since B-hub Prague is a startup, Patricia gets the chance to work on more than just marketing tasks. She is coordinating events, such as an ASMR learning discussion coming up soon. She is also getting a taste of talent recruitment; she goes through resumes and conducts interviews of potential candidates with her teammates. The chances to do new tasks are wonderful; however, she feels more pressure to do everything well.

She feels the need to succeed at all that she does because she feels a lot of guilt towards her family. She is very grateful that they are paying everything out-of-pocket so she can have this experience. Although she understands this as a time for her to grow and change, she also sees this as a time in which her family has to pause the expansion of their business. Remembering that factor caused her to get involved with all activities, and it became very confusing. She questioned where she should be devoting more of her time, but with a bit of trial and error she is learning to navigate between the office, school, and her personal pressures.

Patricia found that having an internship while studying abroad can become a lot, but she still believes it is a worthwhile experience. She finds solace in going to Sunday church, where she is able to connect with other Filipino people. She said that it helps her feel grounded when she is stressed with everything going on. Realizing the times she feels distressed helps her take measures to remember why she is abroad right now. She reflects and reminds herself that interning and studying abroad changes her future opportunities.