My Internship Month at Cowrywise as a Student Ambassador

First day of my internship month at Cowrywise 🤩

It is a dream come true that I am writing this. I finally got to work with the Cowrywise team!

Chinonso, one of the front-end developers ushered me in on my first day at Cowrywise. Then the customer experience team welcomed me.  It was my very first time at the office but it felt like I had been there before. I waited for my fellow intern and Cowrywise ambassador, Maryann to show up. When she arrived, we were shown around the office, and then in a short while ready for the onboarding session. Whoop whoop! 💃🏽

Onboarding 😎

The onboarding session was mind-blowing. It started with the product manager giving us a rundown of Cowrywise products. It was a really insightful session considering that I had read a lot about Cowrywise. I still learned new things and realized there was so much more to discover about the app. 

It was an interactive session that still feels fresh. The prevalent theme was Freedom and responsibility. The reps talked about how to interact with Cowrywise users and how to get potential users excited about savings and investment.

Emmanuel Faith, the People and Culture Lead also emphasized the importance of freedom and responsibility; how that Cowrywise staff can be free but that freedom comes with the responsibility to work and learn. Mobolaji talked about marketing and kept on reminding us to feel free to share our thoughts and ideas. There is no such thing as a bad idea here. At that moment, Cowrywise felt like the right environment for growth. I was pumped up for work already!

On my second day, we had the CNN interview to push. CNN had interviewed our CEO, Razaq Ahmed along with a few other Fintech representatives in Nigeria. I had an idea about some content we could create and Francis nudged me to go ahead and share it. I felt accepted and integrated almost immediately. In my head, I thought, if this is not the best workplace ever, then I don’t know where is! And I really do mean this. These people are truly building the best place to work. 

Days went by so fast 🚀

Settling down after onboarding was easy because Oyin, a teammate was assigned as my work buddy. She was caring and warm. We had a chat that helped me focus on my strengths so my time at Cowrywise could be effective. Work was easy and fun with Oyin. Her periodical checks and guides really kept me going even when I doubted myself. She made sure I had a good time. 

I became an insider! 🤯

My very first task was to summarise a blog post and get it ready to go public on all social media platforms. I got anxious; my first writing was published and it felt surreal. I was now an insider to the same Cowrywise posts I would read through and engage with before I became an intern here. It was a huge one for me.

This thing called imposter sydrome…😩

After a few days, I saw how awesome all my colleagues were. I began crawling into my skin. Maybe I didn’t fit in. Maybe I did not deserve this. I struggled with self doubt silently and it was eating deep into me. Then I remembered a line from the People and Culture’s Onboarding session. Faith had said,  you wouldn’t have gotten in in the first place if you were not qualified. You are here because you are qualified. I am qualified. I deserve this. That line has kept me going ever since. 

Did I get tired? Yes, I did after the first week. For someone who was new to writing and had to summarise an article or blog post going out every other day, it was tasking at first, then challenging. Then it got overwhelming. A good pat on the back here and there kept me going and that was the best part of it all. It was so easy to open up about getting stuck and getting help from my buddy. I remember a time I was writing content and I became blank. Even though I had well over 24 hours to deliver, I was still blank 12 hours into the task. I raised an alarm because I didn’t quite understand what was going on. Not a single idea; words weren’t coming together either. I later found out it was writer’s block and it happens to the best of us. 

So much can happen in 4 weeks 💙

I was able to bond well with my colleagues during my internship month at Cowrywise. After four weeks, I can now say that I am a budding writer. I am super excited about my new path. Growth can be a beautiful thing when you find yourself in an enabling environment and that is what Cowrywise offered me as an intern. I was encouraged to push myself beyond my comfort zone.

To help me understand how to write better, I took a writing course from Google. Also, I had insightful chats with Oyin, Michael and Ope on how to hone my writing skills. 

That wasn’t all, I had the opportunity to do other things apart from content writing and distribution. I worked with Cowrywise community managers;  that was one aspect of my internship experience I enjoyed. It coordinated and planned events, attended partnership meetings, reached out to possible collaborators, talked to potential speakers for events and understood internal communication better. 

Just like Magic! 🪄

One month is enough to know what you want. Research states that it takes 21 – 30 days to form a habit. My key takeaway from my 4 weeks internship experience is to be intentional about measuring growth, it’s one thing to desire growth, it’s yet another to put in the effort to drive the result.

Our CEO, Razaq once said “Growth can create magical feelings but there is nothing magical about it. It is the appropriate allocation of time to what really matters that creates the magical feeling.” 

Everyone at Cowrywise is result driven and that has made me more intentional about my work and life in general.

Words really can’t do justice to how I grew during my internship month at Cowrywise but…

I am immensely grateful to Cowrywise for the opportunity to intern with them. It feels like the best decision I ever made. From becoming a Cowrywise campus ambassador to contributing actively and now having a glimpse of what it is like to work in a company that strives for excellence. 

I loved every moment of my internship month at Cowrywise. It’s an experience I can never forget.

Go Cowrywise!

ALSO READ

The Cowrywise Ambassador Internship Program: The Journey So Far

Discovering my Career Path while interning at Cowrywise

Meeting Wonderful People in the Cowrywise Ambassadors Program