There are more than 8 months since I flew away from my home country and more than a year since the entire thing begun. To be honest, the trainee experience begins once you get in AIESEC, once you begin meeting AIESEC-ers, building up your expectation, starting to be aware of you and AIESEC, the link between those 2 entities.

Of course, the strongest moments are those when you find yourself going to nowhere: a place you have never stepped on, people you have never saw before your eyes will helping you through, your mind fighting to get the best out of this time. And as I asked myself where is the life-changing experience, I saw it inside myself when I have got back home for the first time after 7 months. There was something different.

As personal goals for this year of traineeship in the Netherlands I put up: traveling, meeting people, getting to know myself through all the things that I am exposed to, fulfill whatever dream from last year that I have forgotten of. And it really happened: more than half of the week-ends I have spent away from my city; Wageningen (and the Netherlands) is truly an international city, so I was exposed to very different peoples; I enjoyed AIESEC in conferences, reception and weekly activities, networking with the others trainees; I discovered what the word friend means. It is a huge challenge to reconsider my life, to understand things from another perspective.

Thinking at the working place… hmmm… a great surprise; one of the greatest surprises of my traineeship. I was given the opportunity to develop on things that weren’t mentioned in any previews paper, even without asking for it. Besides the core IT position, I can also develop in management. I work in a very small firm (part of a very big company), with a very friendly and motivating working environment. It’s completely different than the way I saw this work being done in Romania and I mainly speak about being a trainee in a firm.

It’s up to you,
Mircea Pitigoi,
Trainee at Qnowledge BV, Wageningen, the Netherlands