Thank You Europe
How IBS helped accomplish my goals and grow personally and professionally through the attendance of seminars. I wanted to open this by first introducing myself, my name is Dante Rivera. I currently attend The University of Alabama (Roll Tide). The very first thing IBS did to help me accomplish my goals is by providing the experience for me to travel to Europe. This was my very first time to Europe. This experience helped me grow personally in a numerous of ways, one being that I got to learn cultures more.
I’m going to talk about how the trip helped me grow professionally. I think right off the bat the variety of cultures you’re introduced to helped changed the way I think of business. I say this because when you get to see these cultures up close you then realize how their culture is integrated into the work life. For example the culture of the German people was easily recognizable when we went to the BMW plant. Another way this trip helped me grow professionally was through the use of seminars. The seminars really provided a deep insight into the details on how each company worked. A key factor of why the seminars are so good, is that you have the ability to ask questions and get an instant response about anything you want to know about the company. I think that’s really important because questions will help you understand the company more. Lastly the seminars helped because it helped me find companies that before I had no real interest in, but getting to hear about the companies from representatives was really helpful.
IBS helped me accomplish a lot of my goals! The first being getting to travel to Europe. I got to go visit places that were on my bucket list like Paris, London, and Italy. Also this trip was spent with an amazing group from Mark to Judy and Bart, there aren’t enough words. The students who went on this trip were amazing and I can say I’ve made new friends! Another goal of mine was to further my knowledge in the business world and the company visits and seminars were excellent. I got to visit Munich, yodel in an Austrian restaurant, experience Venice, Eat dinner on lake Geneva, Visit the French Open in Paris, explore London all in 24 days! This trip checked more goals than I was expecting going into it. It was life changing.
Lastly I’m going to talk about how this trip helped me grow personally. I think the main thing was being on my own in foreign countries, where I don’t speak the language and having to adapt on the fly. This helped because it put in a place of discomfort because I’m so use to how things are at home. But learning the cultures and the little nuances so fast in each country was very rewarding. I quickly grew out of that discomfort in the first country Germany, and after that it was amazing. This trip also helped me grow personally because I had to become more social. I’m in foreign countries with 40+ people I’ve never met. It’s crazy how fast it went from 40 strangers to a family of 40.
All in all this trip was everything and more that I could’ve expected. From growing professionally through the seminars to growing personally by becoming more sociable. To accomplish all my goals, this IBS trip was for sure worth it. I hope more people get to experience this once in a lifetime trip. Thank you so much IBS
-Dante
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