How Catalonia meets Volda
An international student at VUC is making five reports about Norway for the most popular Catalonian tv-channel.
Text by Sonia Gonzálvez Juan
This is the story of Laura Farré, a Spanish media student who found the opportunity of doing her internship while studying abroad this year as an Erasmus+ student. She’s working for TV3, the highest rating TV channel in Catalonia. Specifically, on Blog Europa (or European blog in English) which is the program that she’s taking part in.
– It is retransmitted on channel 33, which is also part of TV3, the main channel. It’s aired every Sunday at 21.55 and basically, all the content you see in Blog Europa is run by Erasmus+ students who are currently studying abroad in a European country. We also have to be studying media or journalism degrees, and the reports, which are the main tasks for us, have to be about curious and interesting things related to the country we are in, and its people.
Laura’s European blog
Laura’s task is to make five different reports about Norway. And she’s already planning everything.
– I have to show mainly the city I’m living in, and for that, I’m going to make 3 reports. One of them is about Bygdepride Ørsta/Volda, an organization that aims to defend local people’s rights and equality. Furthermore, they won the “Gender equality 2018” prize last year.
But Laura’s reports go beyond Volda
– I’m also travelling to Oslo next week, to make one about Grünerløkka neighborhood, and another one about Mathallen, a street food market where you can buy national food, but also taste dishes from other countries. I think it’s important to talk about the capital city too.
IPA 208, the course which made it possible
How Laura ended up doing this internship, was something she didn’t plan.
– In fact, it was my University who suggested me to take part in it. They knew I was going to study in Norway and we found a course at VUC pretty similar to what I had to do in Spain (internships are mandatory in some Spanish Universities in order to finish the bachelor degree). So, I contacted the TV company and when I passed the interview, the internship was mine.
The course she’s taking part in at Volda University College, is called IPA 208-213: internship with internship report, and is part of the planning and administration bachelor degree. Combining both classes and the internship itself, it has been a great opportunity for Laura to learn things about real situations in the labor market while discovering more of Norway.
– I really like IPA’s course. It’s really practical. We have had different exercises in which we learnt how to get the most potential out of your CV, how to create professional surveys, how to build successful networking, etc. Also, we had interesting lectures with special guests, like that time an Italian business man came to talk about entrepreneurship. But the thing I remember the most was when a woman who’s working at a human resources company came, and we had to make a role play exercise in which she was interviewing me for a pretended available job. I was nervous at the beginning, but it helped me a lot in realizing what my communication skills and my abilities are.