A Foolproof and Totally Unbiased Internship Guide at Happy Hive
Normalcy has been a word overused by most in the last two years or so. In reality, normalcy is hinged on the patterns of the past, and anything made up to disrupt it is simply nothing more than a fad, except when the timeline involves an eon.
However, we’ve all just glossed over that fact, owing to how we all needed some “placebo” trigger to remind us that this plight will be over sooner than later.
For us students, that meant being restricted from the outside world, which yielded a sense of, well, sheer boredom and formulaic days. College was already tough to begin with, and being tethered to our monitors and smartphones was not only unhealthy but also quite limiting, given that we were already on the brink of graduating.
Graduation, however, is all but a glorious pivot to the reality of adulthood. I don’t want to assume the robe of the thief of joy, but the inarguable fact stood that we were not fully equipped to stand in the circuit of working. Fortunately, as customary with seniors, an internship was just what we needed to get off on the right foot. But of course, in typical early 2020s fashion, that also meant brandishing our eyes in front of our screens atop the usual 20-plus hours we spend weekly, listening to lectures and the god-who-knows-how-many hours we exhaust polishing our thesis paper only to be greeted the next day with further revisions.
On my part, after weeks of nitpicking on where I should push my luck to feel growth on a laptop somehow, I found myself applying to be an intern at Happy Hive, a modern business solutions start-up with a bevy of services under its hood.
First, argue with a wall on the modern thing (yes, Discord usage automatically merits a green flag). Second, it was exactly what I was looking for. Spoiler alert: despite consuming just 160 hours, it has easily been a lot more galvanizing than my stern, four-year pre-law program, which often felt like a marathon to see who loses, not who wins (no hate intended).
I was assigned to the Marketing Team under the tutelage of Boss Iris, Miss Gabby, and Miss Marinet, mostly working on publication materials. Picking their brains on things that veered as far away as possible from my Codal readings was as delightful as it was productive, as they all had their own flair for impressing the eye and ensuring that there was more than the surface level.
Luckily, I was assigned to do a bunch of pubmats as well, which, while not a walk in the park, was a much-needed break from recitations, exams, thesis, name it. Doing a bunch of trial-and-errors on Photoshop, scouring the web for inspiration (just to scrap them outright eventually), and feeling jittery before sending outputs to the experts (Miss Gabby!) made for an experience that eclipsed my expectations.
I was still on the monitor, but I definitely started to feel like I wasn’t just traversing a circular road doing the same thing until the wheels fell off.
Aside from the pubmat work, I was also given back-room tasks from time to time, such as record-keeping and contract revisions. It was quite daunting at first. While I had working knowledge of contracts, it’s not a student’s playground anymore—this is the real world we’re talking about! Even a typographical error, especially with numbers, could cause headaches along the way. Luckily, nothing of that sort happened at all.
Lastly, the happy in Happy Hive is really ingrained in the culture, from top to bottom. When I first hopped into the Discord server, I was immediately greeted and promptly asked questions—not the exam type of questions, hah. Even just scrolling in the #general server will give you a smile. Everyone was free-spirited and had a voice, though professionalism was still across the board.
I’m not sure if I can call myself a Happy Hive alum, given my relatively short stay. Still, if anything, I can guarantee that the company will make anyone—from clients to workers and interns—happy campers (or hives!). The company’s process is systematic to a tee, efficient to the core, and consumer-oriented to the max.
To wrap things up, I’m genuinely grateful to Happy Hive for being a memorable teacher of things that transcend academics and careers: the value of teamwork and coworking, the attention to detail, the worth of fostering synergy with people, and most of all, the importance of being part of a happy community, especially during these trying times!