For most college students, summer vacation is a time of relaxation and destressing from a semester of studying, exams, and research projects. However, one dedicated student not only put on his best sales pitch to earn some spending money, he traveled all the way to Southern Minnesota of all places to do so.
If you reside in any rural towns like Eagle Lake, St. Clair, Madison Lake or anything neighboring Mankato’s orbit, you may have seen or heard Jesper Mattias Mägi knock on your door for a moment of your time this past summer. Mägi is a 21-year-old law student from Estonia, but for the past three months, he called small-town Minnesota his home. As an intern with Southwestern Advantage, a company that sells educational textbooks, he spent his summer traveling door-to-door through the state’s southern region.
Now you might be wondering, what is Estonia and where is it? Well, it’s a quaint yet breathtakingly beautiful European country south of Finland and borders the Baltic Sea. Actually, similar to Minnesota in a sense, Estonia is the land of over 2,300 tiny islands to explore with a population of approximately 1.4 million. The country is so small, it only takes about “three hours” to travel from one coast to the other according to Mägi. He is an only child to parents Kaidi and Andres and enters his second year of law studies at the University of Tartu, the largest university in Estonia. Mägi has immense pride for his country as a reservist of the Estonian Defence Force, is a passionate soccer player, and considers himself a cinephile of foreign and domestic cinema.
This actually wouldn’t be the first time Mägi has traveled to the United States as he spent a brief time in NYC with his mother several years prior to his time in Southern Minnesota. Of course, much has changed in the States since his last visit, so he would still experience a bit of culture shock living in the Midwest, “People were so nice towards me, a complete stranger, but there were a few surprises like drinking water with the ice, driving on the ‘opposite’ side of the roads, and just much bigger things are compared to home.”
The internship with Southwestern Advantage would be a spur-of-the-moment decision for Mägi, as a “friend of a friend” persuaded him to join the cause of selling educational books to eager students back in November 2024. It would take an eight-month long training course before he would be prepared enough to make the trip, and it was a random chance that his team would be sent to Minnesota.
For the uninitiated, Southwestern Advantage produces a line of educational books, apps, and online resources designed for students pre-K thru 12th grade to assist with academic learning, reading retention, and life skills. They are mostly sold via door-to-door sales, but there are subscription websites families can access as well. It was the mission statement of helping students improve in the classroom that motivated Mägi to be a positive force during his internship, “I learned during the trainings that parents can have a hard time keeping up with their kids’ school work after a long day on the job, so the books are a helpful guide for both child and parent to help save time and build a strong bond.
Of course, door-to-door sales can be met with some resistance as residents may not wish to be bothered or just aren’t the appropriate audience, so it would be a careful balance of charisma and understanding that would make Mägi successful this summer, “It was a really fun experience to be a part of this. I wasn’t the typical salesman, but a student working an internship, so people were really nice to me.” It’s not often these small towns get mysterious visitors in town, so word of mouth soon spread throughout Southern Minnesota about Mägi and that’s when the books started flying off the shelves, “By my internship, I had a lot of people who recognized me before I even knocked on their doors. I sold about 50 or so books, but the program was about so much more than sales, but the people that you meet along the way.”
His final few days of his internship ended in late-August and Mägi will now be returning to Estonia for his second year of law school. He reminisced on his time here in rural Minnesota, the lessons learned, and especially a healthy dose of Minnesota Nice, “I learned a lot about work ethic, discipline, and how to be a friend, even to complete strangers during this internship. I’m grateful I took a chance to be a part of it and I met a lot of friendly and interesting people throughout my three months here.” We wish you luck on your studies.
