Everyone at Entercomm drinks it to get powered up in the morning, and they graciously shared it with me.
I took the bus to work at 7:15 a.m. to arrive early my first day, and proceeded into the 3rd floor office at Puerto Madero to meet Brenda, my boss. As the regional officer for this office, she gave me a brief rundown on what the company does and who each of its clients were. They specialize in software companies throughout Latin America, but work with others as well—such as a construction website, a group in England and more.
Entercomm’s four big services are:
- Digital Marketing
- Image and Design
- Media and Content
- Corporate Events
I met each of the ~eight employees as they walked in, each who greeted me and everyone else in the room with a kiss on the cheek. I’m sure they were happy to see an intern because hey, I’m at their disposal for free labor! Sol, one of the copywriters, was ecstatic that I could do the translating. Two of the women worked on design, two were account executives, Brenda was the regional officer, and a secretary and manager of the location had offices downstairs. As you enter the office, the manager and secretary have their large desks and windows, and upstairs is a small room with eight computers and chairs lined on the two walls. It’s a lot more open and interactive than America’s cubicle environment, which I liked. Pablo who sat next to me played U2 and Beatles music all morning, so it was amusing to hear a porteño sing or hymn along in perfect English. Brenda and the rest of the employees passed projects onto me as I completed each one.
Some of my tasks for the day included:
- Copywriting headlines and subheaders for a new website they’re creating for a client in California
- “Clipping” –creating a document for each client of all of the news articles in which their name appears in the past 24 hours (or on a Monday, over the weekend). This involves a lot of intense Googling and searching on websites!
- Translated the copy for two advertisements, one English to Spanish and the other Spanish to English
- Researching video and information for slot machines from IGT, international game technology
I’ve never felt so accomplished about completing work as I did today, especially with instructions entirely in Spanish, or castellano (Spanish with an Argentine dialect). My Spanish probably improved a ton just today. I understood most of the instructions given to me, and the employees said I speak well, but I just need to work on keeping up with fast-paced conversation. The office ate lunch together around 3 p.m. (typical Argentina lunch), where I learned that it’s hard for me to pick up on what everything means unless I’m listening to my full potential—eye contact and everything. I couldn’t eat my lunch and understand every spoken word. My goal is to change this by the end of the summer. After 30 hours of work a week, I think this is achievable.
Challenges of the day
- My boss asked me: desayunaste? – Did you eat breakfast? --> But in castellano, it sounds like: Des-a-jun-as-te? --> It took me a good five minutes to understand what my coworker was saying, and then I did in fact tell her that I ate breakfast. Haha.
- In an effort to finally fix our router, the landlord came in and took it out today. We went to Freddo where we frequently use WiFi for free, and it didn't work =O. So now I'm sitting at an ice cream shop / heladería using its internet. So we had to buy ice cream. #darn
- Inspiration: This is a study I found on Mashable regarding social media distractions. Despite the fact that I'm working for free, it's what keeps me from checking any social media or email while I'm at my internship.
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