Changing my life – one word at a time

Escrevi um texto para divulgar o bab.la em diferentes países com a Aiesec, então coloco aqui para os interessados... Só que é - obviamente - em inglês.

When applying for an AIESEC internship, what I hoped to achieve was more knowledge about the world. I had worked as Vice President of Exchange for one year, and what made me feel proud and happy about my work was to know that by bringing interns to my country or providing them an internship abroad I was changing their lives. I decided I wanted to change mine as well.

Luckily I got accepted for the first internship I applied for: at bab.la in Germany. (http://bab.la) bab.la is an online language portal that has dictionaries in 11 languages (hopefully more very soon), lessons to practice vocabulary in different languages, interesting quizzes and a forum. I would be responsible for maintaining the quality of the English-Portuguese dictionary – but also creating a Portuguese-German one from scratch. What a challenge, I thought.

I arrived at the company and I was introduced in a friendly atmosphere way better than I could have ever imagined: people from several different countries working together with one shared goal: creating the world´s greatest dictionary.

Now that I have been here for a while, I realize that the everyday challenges & duties get more and more interesting. I have been discovering a lot - even about my own mother tongue – and also putting into practice what I learned in my journey through the Social Communication studies.

I love languages more than ever, I acquire a lot of knowledge, and I understand the world around me better. But, much more than that, I am sure that I am indeed changing my life.


Vitória Schilling, from Brazil - 2009

If you would also like to live a life changing experience abroad, get in touch with me, I will be glad to share my experience: vitoria.schilling@aiesec.net

And as for the language lovers out there, I highly recommend bab.la as an opportunity to take up the challenge and understand more about the amazing world of words…