Praktika Lietuvos-Jungtinės Karalystės žurnale www.londoniete.lt

After graduating from Vilnius University with BA in Translation Studies, I had decided to acquire some practical skills that I felt I still lacked, and that seemed to be worth paying attention to. I assumed that through participation in Erasmus+ postgraduate traineeship program I would not only improve my professional skills, but I would have a chance to develop a range of very important and highly transferable skills necessary in coping with the challenges of the 21st century. My experience as a trainee journalist and proofreader in the Lithuanian-UK lifestyle magazine www.londoniete.lt has justified these assumptions. Through participation in Erasmus+ training scheme I developed skills that directly correlate to success in just about any field — media literacy, digital communication skills, and meta-perspective view.
In a world that gets smaller and more culturally diverse every day our ability to “take a walk in somebody else’s shoes” is critical, so traineeship abroad was a great opportunity to step out of my own perspective and into another’s, because for six months, from September 2016 till spring 2017, I became a Londoner. I had to find out how does a Londoner feel, and a lot more…what does she eat? how often does she smile? what does she wear? how does winter look like in London? what does a Londoner do on Christmas Eve? All these questions had to be answered, and I felt a little bit as an undercover anthropologist who after four years in academic environment as an “armchair linguist” finally emerged from under heaps of grammar books full of theories and words, and stepped out to “explore the field”.
While living abroad challenged me to move outside of my existing comfort zone and helped me understand the importance of diverse ideas, work experience in journalistic media afforded me a unique glimpse at the technical means used to produce and publish communication for the public, allowed me to gain media-specific language competence, and made me more media literate.
Being part of an online media company that is a virtual work environment was still another mind-blowing experience. It turned out that in creative jobs like Internet media the office-free model works incredibly well and provides endless opportunities to hone digital communication skills that consist not only in being able to clearly express ourselves in a professional manner, but also relate to speaking over videoconferencing software, email management, participating in online webinars and using social media to form beneficial relationships.
So go for it, be transcultural! Learn languages, overcome cultural barriers, experience the world from a different perspective, foster your curiosity and critical thinking – these skills will be useful in dealing with whatever matters most to you.

Dalia Šuminaitė