At Tempocasa this week, Dane and I finished up our work on the existing workflows of the Customer Care division. We developed a powerpoint presentation detailing what we like about the current workflows of the company, what we think should be improved, and how those improvements influence the Net Promoter Score of Tempocasa. It dawned on Dane and I this week how much trust is being displayed in us at the offices. We have received very open-ended instructions for each project and have had very little interruption while working. This has given us lots of autonomy in completing our tasks for our supervisor, Silvia. I think Dane and I agree that this freedom we’ve been granted with has directly benefited our work for Silvia and Tempocasa as a whole.
Class this week has been very interesting! Monday we started with a conversation on loan forgiveness programs and the upcoming presidential candidates. This was followed by a debate on whether or not businesses often release PR statements with an empty rhetoric to appear more virtuous. For about a half an hour we were wrapped up in discussion about a Business Roundtable press release from the 90’s and its counterpart released in 2019. The two reports contradicted the views of the Business Roundtable and laid the groundwork for our debate. Wednesday’s class was spent watching the movie “A Civil Action” followed by some discussion. I’ve really enjoyed both of the days we’ve spent in class just watching a film. I find that I absorb the information much more effectively than just by reading about a topic.
Over the weekend I visited my good friend Uros in his village in Serbia! I have never been to Serbia and quite honestly, would never have visited if Uros didn’t live there. In American pop-culture, the Slavic countries are depicted as very industrialized, brutalist, and rundown. Before I even landed in Belgrade I knew that these preconceptions were completely unfounded. The area around Belgrade fits the stereotype a bit, but the moment you get out of the city limits, you are surrounded by rolling hills, farms, and land still untouched by man. I got to visit the village he grew up in and see his childhood home. His home and farmland has been in his family for almost 100 years so being able to share his culture and history was an incredible experience. We hiked a mountain in the Stolovi region and were greeted by wild horses and dogs at the top. After our strenuous yet peaceful hike, we went back to his home where his family made us dinner using the ingredients found on the farm. I seriously felt like I was in another time period and it was like nothing I’ve ever experienced before.
