(1) Academic Course on Corporate Social Responsibility

This week in class, we watched a movie with John Travolta where he played the role of an injury lawyer going after 2 big corporations for polluting a small towns water supply. While Jan (the character Travolta plays) ultimately goes broke in this pursuit, it was interesting seeing his character development throughout the movie as he became more attached to the case. The movie was based off of real life events, and I’m sure there are countless other examples of corporations getting slaps on the wrist for completely ruining the environment of small towns around the US. To me, the film really speaks to just how powerful these corporations are as they have massive legal teams ready to defend them against any allegations which makes it extremely hard to get any meaningful change in small lawsuits.

(2) Practicum in Milan with an Italian Company

I spent the majority of my week continuing my work searching through LinkedIn to find a Sales Engineer located in Minnesota for an Italian printing company that was looking to expand into there. Outside of the office, we had homemade lasagna made by my boss Mauro at his house, which was delicious. Even Jimmy finished his whole plate which impressed me as well as my colleagues at Gen-USA. Towards the end of the week, I briefly researched sponsors for a J-1 Visa in the US that worked with Italian companies, and I’m sure that next week I will continue my work doing this. I am excited to see what my boss cooks for us next week, and he mentioned that it might be ravioli this time which is something I am looking forward to trying.

(3) Social and Cultural Immersion through travels in Italy and Europe

This Sunday, we traveled to Florence for a day trip which was a couple hours away by fast train. I had remembered going there with my family years ago, and there was a hot chocolate place that stood out in my memory as being good, so even though it was upwards of eighty degrees we still went and got a cup of hot chocolate. While the hot chocolate was more rich than I had remembered, and was also very expensive at five euros a cup, I am glad I went and tried it again as it was nice to revisit places I had been to before. After walking around / shopping all day, we had a nice dinner at a restaurant in Florence where we had a back room reserved for a table of eight. While initially we all wanted to get a steak for ourselves, our waiter told us that would be too much food so we ended up splitting five steaks among the eight of us. The steaks were very rare, however I enjoyed them and it was great getting a classic Florentine dish while we were in Florence.