Author: Saki Arimoto
Editor: Tin D.
About myself
I am Saki, a 3rd Year Major in Business Economics. I have been interning at the Campus Globalization (CG) Team for 3 semesters, and I am currently a Middle Staff. Outside campus, I have had three internships, and I can say that being a part of the CG team has definitely helped me increase my chances of landing those positions.
Before being a CG intern, I had not heard much about the team. In fact, I only knew CG during the Info Session for the Recruitment Period. I was (and still am) interested in creating videos, a frequent SNS user, and have somewhat the required language abilities, so I thought that this could be my opportunity to be more active and involved in the university’s extracurricular activities.
What is Campus Globalization?
Now, you may be wondering what Campus Globalization is. Tokyo International University offers Student Leadership Internships (SLI) to students to experience on-campus paid internships, and one of the teams is Campus Globalization. We are a small team of 9 bilingual talents, and our goal is to connect all students in TIU by making the community more inclusive and bilingual. We are able to do these through our tasks which can be categorized into 5: Workshop Planning, SNS Management, Video Project, Translation Project, and Student-led Project.
1. Workshop Planning
Every semester we hold 3 workshops for language exchange. Organizers choose any topic that is of relevance to the TIU community, and participants will discuss the chosen topic using both Japanese and English. This workshop enables bilingual students to meet fellow students who can speak both languages and at the same time, converse about pressing issues in more depth.
I can still remember the first workshop I led. I was nervous as I am quite introverted, especially before. I was also a bit insecure with my language abilities, but I realize that the workshop itself helped me boost my confidence and that making mistakes in grammar is completely fine as long as I am able to convey what I intend to convey. Of course, learning the right grammar is important but there will naturally be times that one would forget these, and that is okay. After holding a number of workshops, I got less nervous and I was also able to moderate other events well. Thanks to CG I got such opportunities.
2. SNS Management
We are also in charge of managing the tiu_sli account on Instagram. Not only do we coordinate with other teams for content, but also translate their captions into either Japanese or English so everyone can get a grasp and be updated with the events in TIU.
This task is obviously great for those who want to pursue marketing as their jobs. It also helped me when I applied to an international advertising company in Tokyo, and fortunately, got accepted. As I also use social media very frequently, I enjoy doing these tasks.
3. Video Project
We also do a number of video projects. We have collaborated with other SLI teams for SLI Recruitment Video, Welcome Message Video, and many others. We also contributed to creating a video for the Career Center with the Takadanobaba Office, and to editing videos assigned by the E-Track Academic Affairs Office. We used CG-exclusive equipment to film most of our videos, but as for our recent projects, since we have to move online, most were done at home, but heavily focused on editing. It is also another great practice to get used to different video-editing software, as well as meeting with professionals who can share their skills face-to-face.
4. Translation Project
As for this project, this is rather the simplest among the tasks mentioned. We are assigned by different offices in TIU to translate documents. This is also good practice for those who want to hone their translation skills while getting paid.
5. Student-led Project
This is still quite recent. With our advisors, we are encouraged to think of new ideas to help the TIU community to be more globalized. This website where you are reading this article is actually one of our projects. Especially if you are proactive and have new ideas, you can definitely pursue them as a CG intern.
My experiences
From these tasks, I have gained a lot of experience and skills that I can add to my resume. On top of that, I get to apply these skills in multiple organizations that I am part of. Working with my talented teammates also makes the experience more fun and more interesting. It is not always that one gets to meet highly talented, creative, and skillful people like my teammates so I am grateful to work with them, especially on challenging projects. There would be instances that we get too many projects, but with the help of my fellow interns and helpful advisors, we are still able to manage and make our projects as best as we can.
Lastly…
Many people still ask who CG is, and I, with the rest of the team, tried to explain it a number of times, and so I have made a conclusion about our team.
We definitely are not as publicly visible as the other SLI teams. I actually call our team “the backroom boys (and girls).”
This, therefore, is a good place for students who are not interested in frequent face-to-face interactions but still desire to learn and build highly technical and social-communicative skills, as I do. I believe it is quite a unique internship as we have multiple things we are in charge of. It gets challenging from time to time, but I can definitely say that being a CG intern is a fulfilling experience, and I would recommend qualified TIU students to try this too.
Times Of TIU 