Overall experience
The whole internship is quite good. I usually associate home-based internship as freelance work. I am happy to give a try in this mode of work.
My first internship regarding publishing is more about the distribution sector of online book store. The second, the publishing of newspaper and I was responsible for peripheral promotion. This internship is an experience for me to see closer of the whole picture of general publishing process. I would describe the span of work as internal dialogue. When I was assigned with tasks and instructions, I familiarized myself with the documents and figured out their relation to my upcoming tasks. The communication between my supervisor and I is through email. It is not very often to get instant feedback. So if any question comes up in my mind, I would get down to those on my own. This helps improve my problem-solving skills because once or twice when I thought deeper, I found my questions silly or everything was already self-explanatory.
I enjoyed the search for book reviewers most. I could go to enormous amount of blogs and the diversity appealed to me, particularly when I found bloggers interested in comics & illustrated books. It was like the windfall coming along my tasks.
Researches are always followed up by analysis. Although I am still too new to this industry, I really hope that I could have worked with my supervisor for the analysis part. Maybe just one or two questions for me to think upon, I guess?
Reflection
The flexibility granted by this job nature is something I didn’t manage well. I was used to be assigned tasks. So after I completed the tasks and reported my progress, I stayed tuned and waited for next job. Besides, the research tasks actually have no end such as looking for book reviewers. After I had been collecting a long list of reviewers, I thought the work was completed and put it an end.
I used to consider the work mode as tasks based that as long as I finished the assignment within the time frame, I passed.
When Chris discussed with me the problem of initiative and working hours, she told me that this is the typical lazy office culture of Hong Kong - the subordinates always avoid asking for comment on performance, giving suggestion on top of assigned tasks, emailing in super tense tone and for fear of 'bothering' the supervisor. And these concepts should be uprooted. She asked me how many of her suggestions did I think of such as using Twitter to explore the cross-linking of publishers and reviewer. It springs my mind instantly - I visited Iris, the intern in PMQ and suggested her raising the idea of reducing the size of the paints (so that amateur painters can save a sum to buy more paints of different colors). But I have never thought of new ideas for my host company!
Job hunt/ future work
I used to think myself being proactive enough to saying something when I should say. And I always think that finishing the job over than standard has already fulfilled my role. The chat with Chris makes me reflect upon my understanding on freelance work and also the office culture of Hong Kong.
As a creative stream major and writings lovers, I foresee the possibility to devote myself to publishing industry or to publish my works. The internship experience helps me better understand how a publishing house work and to sort out the most suitable publishing process for books (according to the genres, language, audience, expected influence by the publishing channels etc.)
I appreciate the choice of presenting the internship experience in blog. (As I know many course works in CityU are required to present via blog, so I can just put all the things together.) It is a causal way to conclude the experience and it feels really like going to an end. I am hereby to thank my host for selecting me, thank my department for arrangement, thank Chris for her time and thank you for your reading.
