<p>Hi everyone, I'm not sure where to post this so I'll leave it here.</p>
<p>I'm a Junior from NJ who speaks decent conversational Chinese. My parents have a friend who is the VP of the Shanghai branch of an international corporation and he offered to allow me to intern or volunteer at his company.</p>
<p>However, I'm having trouble thinking what I could do there. I want to study Finance or Business in college and I can't think of doing anything other than being the mail carrier. My Chinese is limited, which I intend to work on.</p>
<p>Does anyone have any suggestions? All input is appreciated...thanks!</p>
<p>I think you should still take the opportunity. Doing internship/volunteer works abroad is always a plus since it demonstrates your foreign language skills. I share some same background as you, I speak chinese fluently and my dad has connections back in china to get me these kind of opportunities but he was too ignorant back then to see how good it would be especially back then I wanted to learn finance or business too! (well I changed to IR now.) So cherish your chance! Regarding to what you do there, i understand how you think being a mail carrier or any other trivial work won’t really help you at all; however, since you are still in highschool, it is already rare that a company is willing to offer you an opportunity to work there, i dont think you can find a place that will actually let you do some REAL finance/business work you know? If you are a college student now then things probably would be different since you are attaining the knowledge at school. Well thats just my opinion, I have never done any intern work, but I have asked my mom to look for some intern opportunities for me too. She knew people from Lacoste (The clothing store) and GQ (The famous mens magazine) in china, but they all turned me down at the end after hearing that i’m still in high school. so yeah, i think you should just take whatever you can get. And plus you never know what you be doing there! :)</p>
<p>Sorry im a pretty wordy person…</p>
<p>nrseries,</p>
<p>thank you so much for your great response. I really want to do something in China and, to be clear, it’s okay to do some menial task?</p>
<p>More than college admissions, you should do what you love during summer.
Not sure if you are Chinese but that may play a factor in terms of how quickly you can integrate over there. If all you do is just sit alone in the mail room, that wont do any good. On the other hand, if you take this opportunity to really learn about how things ‘work in China’ or how it is different from the USA, that would be a good experience. It just depends how much you put into it. If you are not Chinese and you think you will have trouble going beyond just sitting by yourself and shuffling mail, then perhaps you may be better off taking a business summer class/internship locally or at a pre-college summer program. So think what YOU want to do, and whether you can fit in there or not.</p>
<p>If you do intend to go there, try to assimilate yourself in the culture, do some local volunteering, learn Chinese, get a chinese friend…you know the whole ‘student exchange’ type experience. Dont sit in a hotel and spend time buried in a desk and shuffling mail :)</p>
<p>Thanks for the response. Yes I am Chinese and I’m not worried about assimilation. However, I really want to go to Shanghai and learn about the business culture there, preferably hands-on, but I don’t know what I can do.</p>