Title:Personal Reflections: Faris Bseiso

I had a journalism internship lined up at Bloomberg Industry Group in Arlington, right outside D.C., that was to start on May 26.

Over spring break, students got an email from Georgetown that said that classes would move to being online. My brother Basil (B’23) and I immediately began packing our things and preparing to leave because we figured that this was just a stepping-stone to campus closing. And then we left for Abu Dhabi, which is home.

I was home with my family in Abu Dhabi in April when Bloomberg Industry Group confirmed that the internships could be remote.

Abu Dhabi is eight hours ahead of the East Coast. My first two weeks, I was working from 5:00 p.m. to 1:00 a.m. because that was 9:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. on the East Coast, so I was able to make all the interns’ training meetings, all the information sessions, the on-boarding classes. They were very accommodating about the time zone difference, and I started working from 3:00 p.m. to

11:00 p.m., which was 7:00 a.m. to 3:00, East Coast time. I worked the bulk of the day that people in the States worked, and I didn’t feel like I was completely out of the loop. I was supposed to work on the corporate team but they shifted me to the tax team in London because the time difference would be less of a problem. It ended up being really interesting to report on tax.

The internship concluded on July 31. Then Bloomberg Industry News hired me as a freelance contributor to cover tax news in the Gulf region.

I came back to D.C. in August. I had already signed a lease before I knew the university’s fall decision. At least I’m in the same time zone as my classes.

Faris Bseiso (SFS’21) is from Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates.