My day started today with a visit to the doctor’s clinic. You must be wondering what a grim start to a conversation. But for someone from India who came with zero raised to the power infinity knowledge of German to Berlin, it was nothing short of an adventure. I was suffering from a lot of pain and I wasn’t sure of how I would manage at the clinic to explain my illness. As warned by a lot of friends, the executives at the clinic did not speak English.

But I survived.  I was able to fill up the forms. May not be a perfect grammatical sentence, but I still think I would have easily made my teachers proud at my language school Kapitel Zwei, if they saw me! Two levels of intensive German classes later, I was now able to handle daily transactions and make small talk. For example, to the currywurst seller. Yes, it gives a lot of happiness to be able to talk small sentences and it feels like small wins.

So, I was indeed happy that I could understand and navigate through one of my biggest fears today – falling ill in Berlin. The other one being, finding a job to support my studies. I was lucky to find a student job very recently. I am currently working with a company called CampusIndia.de. My company helps Indian students from technological backgrounds find a job in Germany. There is a huge shortage of technically skilled workforce in Germany and a majority of Indians in Germany and Berlin are studying exactly that. We hope to fill this gap by educating companies about the skills of Indian students and enabling students to connect with open positions.

It’s been a great start to the work experience. I found this job because my CEO had come to talk about the company at my college – HTW Berlin. After his talk I made a short conversation with him and found him a very genuine person. I told him about my background of marketing and hoped to keep in touch with him. As the university holidays approached I started looking out for working student jobs. I reached out to my current CEO, enquired and it clicked! I was soon to join at the startup at Adlershof with the mission of helping fellow Indian students find jobs in Germany and find value for their potential. It’s been close to two weeks now but till now: So far so good!