Julia Dzurenko's Blog Post #7 Week Ending June 24th | 2024 Lehigh-in-Milan with Professor Gupta

CSR Professor Gupta’s Class

This Monday in our CSR class, we discussed the topic of DEI within corporations and following corporate social responsibility, and distinguishing employee positions based on diversity of the candidate, or the factual qualifications of the candidate. This is a huge debate in the world right now, especially after COVID-19 and the Black Lives Matter Movement, where society has been emphasizing the equity between minorities in the world and workplace. The point of minorities not being exposed to the same opportunities as white people entering the workplace is the biggest issue, less because they are a minority. So these corporations need to start exposing themselves and making more of an effort to open up their opportunities to minorities at an early age, in case they weren’t exposed to it growing up, let’s say in a low income household. I don’t believe wealth should be inherited in the case of the parents raising their children on low income, so that means the children should also live on low income. I believe in equity, meaning everyone should be exposed to the same opportunities, and what they choose to do with those opportunities are the differences in people.

Internship Seminar:

This week, we didn’t have class for our Seminar on Tuesday, but Thursday after work, we had a networking event that took place of our class on Tuesday.

Internship in Milan:

This week at my internship in Milan, there were a couple hiccups in the transportation, since my commute is about an hour and a half long from Aparto. The metro today was stop and go. While it takes the metro usually 22 minutes to get to my stop, it took about 40 minutes. This was a big disruption since after the metro I had to take a train, and since I ran late, I missed my train. This brought me to get on the next train that said it would stop in Arcore, where I needed to go. But, this train actually did not stop in Arcore, so my boss had to come 30 minutes to come pick me up and 30 minutes back. Luckily, my boss is very understanding, and is used to driving everywhere for meetings, etc., because he is the CEO and is always moving. I arrived at work at around 10:30 instead of 9 am which made me extremely anxious because I have high expectations on punctuality, and it seems that he didn’t mind too much. He realizes that I have to rely on public transportation, so it’s bound to have mishaps like these.

Travels and Italian Culture

This weekend, a few of us traveled to Nice, France, and it was very beautiful, but we ran into a lot of obstacles throughout the short 2 nights we were there. We rented an airbnb in France, about a 15 minute walk from Old Nice, and 30 minutes from the beach. This airbnb was one floor, and the front door looked right into the rooms and beds within the airbnb, so it seemed a little uncomfortable. We were out until a little late on Friday because there was a Summer Solstice in France on that day, so there were mini concerts, pride bars booming, and the streets were packed with people and good energy. So, we walked home in a group, but once we got to our airbnb we locked the door from the inside for the night. We were all about to go to bed and then we heard these French men approaching our door, and they started knocking and wiggling out the door handle trying to get in. This was pretty scary for us because there was a huge window in the front, and it just wasn’t a safe area. So the men wouldn’t leave so we called the French police, and it was definitely very difficult to get a hold of the police and get them to understand us, but eventually we did and 10 minutes later they showed up at the door. This was very scary for us so the next day we decided to leave and get a hotel for the night, just for our safety. Otherwise, this trip was absolutely beautiful, and on that Saturday we went to the beach for the whole day and it was extremely relaxing. I loved Nice because it had a little town/city but also a beautiful beach. We traveled back to Milan on Sunday, and the trip was about 6 hours from Aparto to Nice, but was very well worth it.