Jennifer Beattie's Blog Post #2: May 28th, 2024 | 2024 Lehigh-in-Milan with Professor Gupta

Since we have not started our CSR Course yet, I still am looking forward to starting it. The one WSJ post that I completed was about the possibility and likelihood of creating “green” cement. I was interested in this article as I was reading it and the supplemental articles because I was unaware that the process of creating cement was so detrimental to our environment, almost 3x as bad as the travel industry. I am looking forward to reading more articles from the WSJ because I want to get into reading it more often and I feel like these assignments will make me more interested in reading it on my own time. I am also looking forward to starting our first class and seeing how it will work since it will be remote.

After this class, I started to realize that I need to dive deeper into what my company does. When I applied to GenUSA, I was never really given the mission statement or a lot more about the company so I am planning on researching and learning more about my company. Looking into and navigating the workplace is an important thing when getting a job whether it be part-time, internship, or full-time. Having the skills to adapt oneself to cultural differences when working somewhere like Milan, Italy versus working in New York. This class is a space for many types of learning and the one that stood out to me was self-reflection and developing skills that may not necessarily be able to be taught.

I started my internship at GenUSA this week and had my first two days. The first day I was introduced to the company and given a few basic tasks to learn the databases they use and familiarize myself with the company, objectives, and what I will be doing with my internship here. A lot of my internship is based on doing research and trying to figure out what are the best marketing strategies that GenUSA can look towards using in a better way to gain customers and maintain them as well. I also got to know the other interns as one of them is from Lehigh, Victoria Hawk, and there are two other interns from Indiana University. I am looking forward to getting to know my boss as well as the people I will be working with during my internship because there are ways that we can work together and build a relationship.

This weekend we traveled to a variety of places and tried many things. The first thing we did was go on the IES Lake Maggiore trip which was amazing to see the three different islands and we had a great time. Then, later that evening we tried to attend an AC Milano soccer game. Some people were able to get tickets, but when we bought ours off of Stub Hub, it turns out we were scammed and never got our tickets. When we got to the game and tried to access our tickets, the seller never transferred us the tickets and we were told by every worker at the box office that we were scammed. It was very unfortunate, but now we know that next time we need to look into it more before we buy them! Then on Sunday, we traveled to Varazze, Italy to go to the beach. We took a two-hour train ride and ended up in a small beach town that had a ton of markets and beach places to stay at and the water was so blue and clear. It was amazing to relax on the beach before starting our internships and the travel to and from was relatively easy, except for when we missed one of our stops on our way there and thought we were going back to Milan instead of being able to go to the beach. But we were able to navigate where the next stop was and continue our beach day. I enjoy the late dinners and aperitivo, but I am still getting used to not having a cappuccino after 11 am.