Naai

4.00 AM

My sister arrives home from work and takes the toddler that’s sleeping on me before my alarms wakes the little one up. He’s been clingy lately and refuses to sleep unless someone is with him.

5.00 AM

My alarm goes off, it plays music that I used to love but now despise. I’m clearly not a morning person.

Open my eyes, look at my phone click the snooze button then go back to sleep, repeating this process until 5:30 am before I actually have to get up so I’m not late at being early.

I get on the bus that takes the longest route to work, it’s nice to have a moment to myself and the perk of being early is that I’m usually alone and have the bus all to myself, apart from the driver. I shut off my brain, daydreaming about things that will never happen and every once in a while, I’ll come back to reality and notice the sun rising as we drive over the bridge.

7.30 AM

My hands hurt cause it’s freezing. Even when the sun is up, it does little to warm me but at least I’m inside now and I know the perfect cure for my frozen hands. A cup of coffee from the café!

I’m probably a caffeine addict. I’ve been here for a short amount of time, but they already know what I want before I even order or maybe they’re just that nice that they remember who I am.

Addict or not at least my hands are now warm!

8.00 AM

Say good morning to my mentor, set up my little working station and have a little morning convo with my mentor. The people here are chill, and supportive and really go out of their way to make me feel welcome.

Time to set me up for the day. Going through emails, looking through messages on teams, saying ‘good morning to the other interns and checking my schedule.

8.30 AM

With all my PowerPoints up and running, I continue my work from yesterday and make some tweaks and changes to my display guides because I have a catch-up meeting with my mentor to look over my work at 9 am.

Display guides are guides that show the merchandising principles and how stores should be displaying their products. On PowerPoint, I create mock-ups of what it should look like and put the order of what the stores should prioritize.

9.00 AM

We look through all the work that I have done. I was stressed but turns out I had nothing to fear, he was kind and gave me constructive feedback on ways to improve and how to simplify it so I can work smarter, not harder. My mentor was really patient and puts in the effort to explain everything in a way for me to understand.

 There’s so much terminology!

10.30 AM - 10.45 AM

Today we have a Tribe stand-up, I hop on teams and listen in to all the wins and achievements of the tribe then head back to continue my display guides.

12.00 PM - 12.30 PM

Message the intern group chat and check if anyone if free to have Lunch. Quickly get in line at the cafe to grab another cup of coffee and an almond croissant. This is a good to time find out what the other interns are doing for work today and to discuss how our assessments are going.

It’s definitely a good bonding time with other students who are in a same position as me.

5.00 PM - 8.30 PM

Arrive home at the same time as my baby nephew, seems he had a long day at day care too. First things first, get the kids sorted. Get them showered, get them fed before it’s my turn to get myself sorted. Then entertain them for the next couple hours until I can put them to sleep.

9.00 PM

The kids are finally fall asleep, so I made an attempted to do some of my assessment, but it didn’t last long.

9.30 PM

Accidentally fall asleep.