Workin' 9 to 5 cause I got to make a livin'

“travailler:” to work
“un stage:” an internship
“un bureau:” an office

After a month of sleeping in, plugging away on the computer, and a few side travels, I have left my mini-summer vacation for the coveted internship I have been searching for during the last 3 months. I finally found an internship, and started working this past Thursday (06/17). Now I have to get up early and go to work everyday?? Besides the fact that I need the 6-month internship to earn my diploma and it will be good professional experience for my future, I have honestly been super bored so it will be nice to have something to do everyday!

I am working for a small pharmaceutical company located in Clermont-Ferrand called, Laboratoires Lyocentre. The company a well established, family-owned, having been started in 1956 and subsequently run by the original owners’ sons. The company was actually originally a cheese company, then the scientists working there starting researching for another way to use the “good” bacteria you find in dairy products, and the company evolved into what is it today. Their core products are called “probiotics,” natural medicines using probiotics in order to revamp the good bacteria in the GI tract and the vaginal cavity in cases of infections and such. The company is present in 40 countries, but not yet in the U.S. market, so my mission for the next 6 months will be to research the U.S. market and see if we can develop a strategy to enter. I am pretty excited to be working for this company for multiple reasons: I will learn a lot about the pharmaceutical industry and how different markets function, since it is a small company I will have access to all aspects of the company, enabling me to have a whole-scale perspective on how a company works, and finally, also because it is a small company, I will be working closely with the big boss people, the “VIPs” of the company.

The next two weeks are going to be some pretty heavy training, so by the end I’ll be chalk-full of knowledge about the products and operations of the company. Friday, the other two interns and I were taken on a tour of the factory and laboratories, which are located in a smaller town called Aurillac, about 2 hours south of Clermont. It was neat to see the actual operations on that side of the company, and begin to understand how the products are actually conceived and then produced.

My French should also improve very much over the next 6 months!