Internship report: Roberta D’Agostino

My name is Roberta D’Agostino and I am a 24-year-old girl from Italy. I am pursuing my Master’s degree in European Studies at the University of Florence “Cesare Alfieri”.

In September 2015 I started my internship at the European Documentation Centre (EDC) in Cardiff, where I was warmly greeted by the EDC team that at the end has turned out to be my second family here in Cardiff. I was lucky to find an international environment working alongside other interns from all over Europe and the world.

I chose to do an internship at Cardiff EDC to improve my knowledge about the European Union – learning how it operates from the inside – and my language skills.

What were my tasks? I followed the news published by the European Commission and the Council of the European Union and added the news sources from those institutions to the European Sources Online database. I can say that thanks to this work, I’ve reached the aim I wanted to. I was also doing other tasks, such as translating and updating guides on the European Union, reviewing interesting think tanks and answering enquiries at the EDC enquiry desk.

I also took part in events. In particular I attended “The European Day of Languages and European Year of Development” held at Cardiff Central Library on 26th September and the event held at the EDC itself on 19th November, “What Europe means to me: Attitudes to immigration, refugees and asylum seekers”, where each of the interns explained the attitude of one member state of the EU.

What about Cardiff? It is a beautiful city and I fell in love with it from the first time I set foot in it and you can’t imagine how amazing it is at Christmas time. I fell in love with its parks, its streets, its Bay, its arcades and so on. People are friendly, funny and deeply in love with their country and origins. I was lucky enough to live the amazing experience of the Rugby World Cup 2015 and it is indescribable the atmosphere I breathed during the whole month.

I’m happy to have chosen Cardiff EDC and I want to thank the EDC Team – Ian Thomson, Ceri and Frederico – and all the interns for such a beautiful and worthwhile experience. I definitely recommend the EDC. I’ve already written it is a great place, well organised and with qualified staff. Don’t be scared to make some mistakes, the colleagues are always ready to help and patient explaining the work to do.