大学の夏休みを利用してディスカバリーズで約1ヶ月間インターンシップを行ったイタリア人留学生のMarcoに、日本の会社でのインターンシップを希望した理由やディスカバリーズを選んだ理由、そしてこれからの展望についてお尋ねしました。
[Marco, who finished our internship program in the Summer of 2014, reported why he joined and where he is going next.]
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Q.What are you studying in your university?
I have finished in July 2014 my last exam of the Bachelor Degree of Computer Engineering. Until now, I learned a wide range of subjects, related to the Electronic, the Telecommunication and the Computer fields, considering only main topics and issues in depth. About The Computer Science field, the course was focused on C and Java programming languages, on Networking, Databases and Operating Systems.
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Q.Why do you try to do internship, and why in Japan？
I am currently working part-time as an IT assistant for a little company which deals with the Research and Development of Shopping Structures. Unfortunately, inside the company there is not a reference person who I can rely on and from who I can learn. Furthermore, due to the University study plan, I have experienced an Internship program for three months in an international company. There, I understood the benefits of this kind of experience and so I wanted to make more, taking in consideration my summer vacation.
About the reason why I chose the country, I can say that Japan is well known worldwide for its companies efficiencies and its people devolution for work. Moreover, my country, as well as other countries in Europe, is dealing with an unstable economic situation. For this reason I then decided to follow my dream and flight to the country I admire since my childhood.
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Q.How did you know “Discoveries”, and why did you choose this company?
When I decided to look for an Internship possibility in Japan, to be honest, I did not know where to start. To make the situation harder, my knowledge of Japanese was not even that good to understand companies’ websites. But I made a decision and I kept pursuing my aim. I got subscribed to some major job-hunting websites and from there, lists of companies were available. I cross checked the lists to understand which companies are related to computers and then I googled all the result in order to get email addresses. When I then got a reply from Discoveries, I was happy to realize that the company I work for in Italy provide a similar service, and so I thought it as my possibility to exploit my experience.
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Q.How do you feel the atmosphere of “Discoveries”?
I am glad to have been in the Discoveries office. Considering my travel an exploration of the country and people life, I was interested in the Japanese working environment. I was almost worried about how strict the working life could be, but I have found this place a nice environment for pursuing the aims and complete the tasks. Despite the lack of strictness I was expecting, I was surprised that everybody is focusing on the job and that the collaboration between coworkers is continuous. I have to say that I am even more surprised to see how practically all coworkers work so hard from early morning until late at night.
As a foreigner coming to Japan, I had to deal with the language problem. Trying to make use of the English language as a mean, the internship program had no problem since the computer world is actually available at first in this language. But I can also say that also my coworkers are able to fully communicate with me, trying to best express themselves in the most comprehensible way. Never leaving me apart and always making me participate in discussion among them. I really appreciate it.
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Q.What did you do in your internship?
The aim of the internship program has been mostly related to the study of how to use the SharePoint platform and its functions. Leaving aside the design of the interfaces, the interesting part of the program came out when I got started with the integration of JavaScript inside SharePoint. Once there, the purpose has been to access the inner databases of SharePoint and manage it by mean of JavaScript and the JQuery library. After this, an interesting aim of exploiting the JavaScript functions has started in order to integrate the Yammer platform. Not only for getting information like Newsfeed and Comment inside the Yammer webpage, but also for having a global access to the data contained in the Yammer website. For this last topic, more documentation about this service has to be considered deeply since it is a non-standard possibility available only in certain circumstances.
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Q.What did you learn from your internship experience?
During the period of the internship I often had to understand something new, not even treated in the University classes. Especially about JavaScript and the use of JQuery, I had more or less the knowledge about what it is and how actually exploit it. But since I have never tried by my own hands, this came as a first big step that I can guess just few students in my university class have actually done for this topic by themselves.
On the contrary, because of the part time job I have in Italy at the moment, I had already seen, and taken a look at what SharePoint is. But I would have never thought this could be the capable platform it actually is, if considered all the JavaScript code and the design part that can be used altogether.
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Q.What are you aiming for in the future?
Soon after the end, I am going back to Italy and I will finish my remaining two years of master degree in order to become a specialized Engineer in Computer Networks.
After getting the master degree I will surely look for a job, hopefully a computer programming occupation. I would like to keep living in my current place in Italy, but I found more exiting and interesting the change and try new possibilities. This Japanese experience has given me a new point of view over Japan and captivated me, encouraging me in going even deeper. I am really happy I have been given this possibility to spend my summer holiday here and to be honest I didn’t even think it could be feasible. But because of this I can understand how the world is full of the possibilities, the problem is just putting the effort in finding them.
