I realized the importance of taking a first step through the internship in Cambodia

[:ja]山下[:][:en]Hirotoshi[:] [:ja]寛俊[:][:en]Yamashita[:]

by Hirotoshi Yamashita

I just had drifted my university life

Hello, I’m Hirotoshi. I took a gay year in the second semester of year 4 and worked as an intern in Siem Reap to establish a cosmetic business. Before joining the internship, even there were interesting things around me I had overlooked that and hadn’t taken an action.
Though I just had drifted my university life, I realized the importance of taking the first step, even it was small, through the internship in Cambodia.

“Taking the first step” rather than “Doing great things”

“Cosmetic business in Cambodia!?”

When I told my jobs during the internship to my friends, most of them made such a reaction.

I’m a boy and I didn’t know about cosmetics. And my major is civil engineering and I didn’t have business skills and never experienced establishing a new business as well.
Furthermore, I needed to sell cosmetics to Cambodians. At the beginning of the internship, I completely didn’t know what I should do and time had just passed by.

Trying to figure out the cause of my confusion, I realized that I had thought about things too seriously. Because in the first place “creating a new business in a developing country” sounds cool, I wondered I had to do great things in order to sell products. In other words, I had made things more difficult. What I had done as a breakthrough was simple, distributing brochures. Trying to do great things was mean less and I couldn’t achieve any goal. In that case, I began to think about acting simple things to get to know the product. As a result, the product awareness gradually went up little by little.

If we do not act we can not achieve any goal. This experience taught me that taking the first step, even the step is small, is important to move forward.

Declare goals and work consciously with time

I realized that starting taking the first step from a simple thing was worthful but doing only simple work made me bored. Spending days with only simple works I became dull and the productivity went down. In that case, I understood that “Put pressure on myself” and “Work with an eye on the clock” were important.

For example, I put pressure on myself with declaring the goal “I would sell XXX USD more” to my friends. Then I started to think how to work on a day to achieve the goal was more efficient. That was how I got out of a rut at work.

Insights gained by own suffering experiences become own future strengths

Insights gained by own suffering experiences becomes own future weapon

I think you can find the insights written above on business books. However, I am sure that insights gained by my suffering experiences become my action guidelines from now on and my future strengths.

Compared to Japan, Cambodia was inconvenient for me. When it rained, the road flood. Even though I was hungry in the midnight there were no restaurants nearby. If there were restaurants but there were nothing I wanted to eat. There were difficulties not only in business but also in life, I feel I have more patience than doing an internship in Japan.

Internship in Cambodia is just a trigger to break out of my shell

When returning to Japan, I realized the convenience and comfort of Japan again. The towns are clean and the food is delicious. I enjoyed my hometown for a while after a long absence.

Even though I tried worked so hard in Cambodia, I would drift life again. It’ll get absolutely nothing out of it. Once I broke out my shell, there was another start line. I want to make a big leap with the experience of breaking my shell during this internship in Cambodia.

Those who feels gloomy, can’t move forward, don’t break own shells, that kind of person, I want them to embark on the internship abroad.

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