Challenging Times With Chocolate as Anti-Stress
International business internship was the next mandatory step of my master program in Germany. I was lucky to become a member of Continental’s Employer Branding team for six months. Continental is a well renowned brand in my home country Ukraine and to join the team of Employer Branding was so exciting because I knew hardly anything about this job and was curious to learn more about it.
Chocolate Museum in Cologne (Germany)
I was three weeks into my internship at Continental’s Hanover headquarter when the spread of the novel Coronavirus forced the whole country into a lockdown. We had to adjust quickly to this new situation and learn to live and work in our “new normal” reality. It was challenging for me as I hadn’t quite picked up all the insights of my new job and hadn’t even met all my new colleagues in real life.
It is already 3,5 months that I work from home now. Sounds like a very long time, but in fact time flew so quickly that I already have sometimes that sad feeling of leaving soon. During this time, I was a part of so many interesting projects. I learned a lot from my team and was glad to contribute my share to the team effort. Especially I liked the international background of the company: every day I could communicate with people from different countries all over the world. I was able to improve my language skills both in English and German, and I even had the chance to talk to a colleague from Continental’s plant in Kaluga/Russia in my native language. What amazed me probably the most was the experience of how smoothly this “remote work” turned out to be for so many employees worldwide. A big respect to IT team who helped us during this challenging time to turn #socialdistancing into #distantsocializing. I have never felt a lack of information or feedback or communication with the colleagues. All in all, that was very productive period for me professionally as an intern and psychologically as a person.
My Motto
In this challenging and chaotic time every person had to take special care of their mental health. But there were lots of different possibilities, organized online by my Conti colleagues, such as: Happy Morning Coffee, Yoga or Workout during the lunch break or Stress Control online training in the evening. I have to say that all these measures are very creative and helpful, but I must confess that I always had my own recipe how to cope with the stress… and this is CHOCOLATE!
My love with chocolate started long ago when I was working at a chocolate factory in Ukraine. I am a big fan of milk chocolate, but I’m always eager to try something new, for example dark chocolate with chili or sea salt, rose ruby chocolate or extra dark chocolate with 99% of cocoa.
My favorite quote about chocolate is: „When life gives you lemons… throw them back and ask for chocolate”.
Happy World Chocolate Day!
This article was written by our employee.
Svitlana Kornilova
