What a Ride!

I was thinking about combining scuba diving with some marketing-related long before even before hearing about Paradise Interns. After stumbling across their website for the first time, I labelled the whole thing as a scam - it just sounded too good to be true. Well, after a few restless nights and a never-ending search through my browser history, I took the plunge and applied.

From this point onwards, the whole application process was pretty straightforward. My last doubts were quickly erased when I got to speak with Anna, the founder of the program personally during the one-hour skype interview. A few weeks later, after trying to explain the whole shebang to family members and friends (with limited success), I hopped on a plane to Bali. It turned out to be one of the best decisions of my life!

I had some experience in different fields of multimedia, but I was pretty much new to social media marketing at the start of the internship. However, looking back at the first month of the internship, Anna, Pim and Elisha taught me more than I could have ever imagined. In fact, it made me wonder what schools are doing wrong as I've never experienced such a steep learning curve before. It was intense (they call it "the Bootcamp" for a reason), but I loved it. Also, hanging out in Bali with all the other interns was hella fun!

After the first month, we all got placed at different dive shops or companies. My placement was kinda special as it was split up into two different dive centres within the same company. I got to spend the first half of my internship in Malaysia and the rest of it in Komodo!

The first few weeks at the placement can be daunting, and I found myself chased by deadlines while trying to settle at the new location. Not being a native English speaker didn't make things easier too. However, I quickly got the hang of the marketing part of the internship and was diving almost daily! The more you get used to to the tools and practises used for the company's social media presence, the easier it gets and I had loads of time available to just soak up life in the tropics, dive and hang out with amazing people!

I came into the internship full of energy, keen to learn more about social media marketing but mainly to get into diving and to live abroad in the tropics. After six months, I can happily tick all the boxes, so I'd call that a win!