Meet Paul Gendek

At 25, Paul Gendek has just had his first snowball fight. Which is no big surprise for someone who normally lives in Florida. However, just now Gendek is living in Stockholm and exchanging Bonnier Corporation for TV4 for three months as part of the GROW program. "This was the first time in my life that I've gotten to really experience the snow and everything that comes with it," he says.

Snow is just a small part of the switch. "My job in Florida is more on the development side and my job here is more on the editorial side, so it's a nice change of pace to see what happens on the other side of the business," Gendek says. At TV4, he's working as a web designer, creating graphics and editing logos for TV programs on TV4's streaming service, TV4play.se, which is a bit different from what he does at Bonnier Corporation, where he leads a team of front-end web architects, primarily converting mock-ups to websites. "The company in Florida is a magazine publisher, and here it's a TV studio, so the different media type is a great experience as well. It was really cool to see professional cameras in action as I watched them do the weather live in front of a green screen."

It's not just about the work. "One of my favorite parts of the experience is meeting new people in a different part of the world, a different lifestyle and culture, with a completely different history," Gendek says. "The biggest challenge is still the language barrier. Most people speak English perfectly, but instructions and signs, etc. are still in Swedish."

Every day there is something new and interesting, Gendek says, which always includes plenty of laughs. "One of the best parts is consistently having pancakes every Thursday in the cafeteria," he says. "That first snowball fight was a lot of fun, too. What may be so common to most Swedes' childhoods made me feel like a kid again."