CareerPlanit - Internship Journal

Internship Journal

An International Experience

Posted March 2000

Steve Sherwood used to think computer science students were "kind of nerdy." Then he spent a summer working on a nationwide software demonstration tour and the following summer working in Germany for a multinational video games publisher.

The first experience caused Sherwood, a junior at the University of Arizona, to change his mind and his major—he now plans to graduate with a B.S. degree in computer science and a B.A. degree in languages and culture.

"I'd always been interested in computers," he says, explaining that he took the software demonstration job after his freshman year "to make some money over the summer and to learn something."

During that summer, Sherwood traveled from city to city demonstrating products from three firms—3DFX Interactive, Jane's Combat Simulation, and Contemporary Marketing. The following winter, he learned that a friend knew the vice president of marketing at THQ International, a multinational publisher of video games. He corresponded with the vice president by e-mail, then landed an interview at a company site near Los Angeles.

Sherwood says the interview went well, and the company decided to send him to its site in Kaarst, Germany, after initial plans for him to work at a site in England didn't work out.

"I really didn't have any idea of what I was in for," Sherwood says, explaining that he spoke no German and knew little about the country.

"Everyone in my office spoke English, with varied levels of fluency," he says. But after work, Sherwood found himself on his own at a nearby hotel, trying to decipher restaurant menus and comprehend German television shows.

Eventually, he began to speak and understand enough German to survive. Meanwhile, he was hard at work debugging a corporate web page, editing documents that had been written in English by German speakers, and testing a game called "X Beyond the Frontier" for computer and language problems.

Sherwood says that while he sometimes grew tired of the game during the six weeks he tested it, "I always tried to find a way to make it interesting."

After he graduates, he hopes to work in the video industry for at least a few years.

"It's a fun industry and it's young industry," he says. "For the most part, the people in it are under 30."

Sherwood says he'd also be willing to return to Europe for a year or two.

"Living abroad is not for everybody, though," he cautions. "It sounds like fun, it sounds glamorous. But there are a lot of challenges that present themselves and you really have to be open to them. You have to be ready for anything."

Sherwood says that both internships taught him a great deal, both personally and professionally. He adds that the experience in Germany was especially wonderful, despite the early difficulties.

"I loved my whole experience there," he says. "I wouldn't trade it for anything in the world."

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