The talk nobody told me I was giving

A year ago I interned in Tokyo through Absolute Internship, at Irvine Systems, and now I work there. In June, Absolute Internship invited a few of its former interns to an evening with engineering students from the University of Texas at Austin. They asked us for a photo and three bullet points of advice on living and interning in Japan, for a slide they’d show on the night.

I went with our CEO and COO and another former intern from my company. As far as we knew, it was a networking event.

Getting there

They’d sent us the address of the wrong building, which is where we met the third former intern, from another company. I still had a phone number from my internship, so I called it and got the right address, in one of the towers by Tokyo Station.

Presenting

There were about 60 students from UT Austin, plus their professors, Absolute Internship’s staff and its partner companies. About 80 people in the room. After a short welcome, the host said we’d now give a short presentation on what we did.

None of us knew we were presenting, so we winged it. The last time I’d spoken to a crowd that size, I’d spent days rehearsing. This time I had one slide and no notes, so I just talked: how I ended up in Japan, what my work is like, what living here is like, and what I’d tell anyone starting an internship here. It went well.

The three of us on stage in our matching company T-shirts, with me talking

The questions were harder. They asked about money, and whether other countries are better places to work, which aren’t easy to answer in front of a whole room.

Afterwards

During the networking part, a group of students came over with more questions, about my work, about working in Japan and about life here. A lot of them were quieter one to one, so I ended up asking them questions too.

Talking with a group of students during the networking part

Our company T-shirts had arrived that afternoon, and you have to earn yours. I’d earned mine by passing my Cloud Practitioner exam, and we decided to wear them to the event.

After that, we headed off for Indian food.

I’d never had to present without preparing before, and it turned out fine. Good to know.