For our last week of the CSR class, we had presentations. My group presented on Big Pharma and the access to life-saving drugs. My group took the position that we think everyone should have access to life-saving drugs and it should also be affordable for them. During my research, there were so many different factors in the US that made these drugs not affordable nor accessible especially to those that do not have high incomes or live in a place where the better technology is. A lot of Big Pharma money is spent on R&D, market research, failed drugs, and the phases and trials one must do to bring a drug to the market. But, my main question was why other countries that are the same if not wealthy as the United States have 100% universal healthcare and also have it be more affordable and accessible. The country we looked into was Switzerland. In Switzerland, within 3 months of moving there permanently, you have to get healthcare and prove it to the government. They have a basic package that everyone has to have and then depending if you want to have a higher healthcare package, you can pay extra. The basic package covers things including illnesses and maternal care, and these companies cannot profit from selling their basic healthcare packages. Looking at this opened my eyes because I called my mom to talk about my healthcare. In my freshman year in high school, I broke my wrist snowboarding and I did not know how much it cost nor did it feel like it affected my family because we receive healthcare through my dad’s employer. In this conversation, I learned that the entire cost of breaking my wrist, including the ER, surgery, pins, post-op, and check-up was around 35,000 dollars which I had no idea. With my insurance, my parents only paid roughly 3,000 dollars, but it made me get into a conversation with my mom about what if we didn’t have the health insurance we did or couldn’t afford health insurance. It made me realize how lucky I am to be able to be covered and this incident does not cause a huge strain on my parents, but it made me want to look into what can be done for the US to achieve a better healthcare model like Switzerland. 

This week in our internship seminar my group presented on our topic of waste management around Italy. We had a lot of fun creating the videos that went into our slides and were so sad that they were unable to play for the class. Apart from that, doing fieldwork for a project including going and watching are things I haven’t done for many projects in high school or college so I thought that it was a fun project to do. It also opened my eyes to how different waste management in Italy is then in the US and made me realize that the US could do a much better job at recycling and it could be so much better for the environment, people just have to want to do it.  We also did mock interview prep with our peers, I did mine with Julia Dzurenko and we both brainstormed and helped each other answer these questions and also figure out what we were good at answering and what we needed to work on more and also the questions we were given was a good mock prep to what employers might ask especially as interview season is coming up in the fall. 

This week for the final week of our internship we helped finish up our SIGEP project that we have been working on all semester. However, this project is not done, because it is a lengthy process that will not be done until October or November as the trade show begins in January. This week we just finished up what we were doing and organized it in a way that our boss, Kamal could pick up where we left off and there would be a smooth transition from us doing our work for him to do it after we leave. It has been a great learning experience learning how to go into the office every day work with others and build relationships with my coworkers and boss. I would recommend this internship to others who are doing this program because it helped me learn about business as well as working with clients and provided a great experience for what I have to look forward to next summer with my internship. 

This past weekend, for our final weekend, we decided to travel to Split, Croatia which was so fun! This was our first time getting on a plane so I was a little nervous about how it would work and making sure we didn’t miss any flights because they were both at 6 am. The water was so beautiful in split and it was super clear also. The only bad thing about the water was how salty it was. It was hard to swim for a while because it would hurt your eyes and destroy your hair a little bit, but this did not stop us from swimming as much as we did. I also did a cliff jumping which was a little scary especially my first time doing it my stomach dropped and I felt like I lost all the air in my lungs, but it was so fun and I got over the fear and did it a few more times. We also did a party boat thing with a bunch of other people which was so fun because we drove to two different spots that we could swim in and one was near the famous blue lagoon, but our boat was too big to actually go to the blue lagoon. Overall this trip was fun, but I am definitely reaping the benefits from it as Tuesday morning I woke up with a fever and it still did not go away on Wednesday. I really hope I can get well before I have to travel home because I do not want to be in a plane for 9 hours while having aches and a fever. I am excited to go home on Saturday but it is definitely bittersweet because this experience was amazing and I definitely recommend it to others!

Inside the Starbucks Roastery Reserve

A picture of Split from the boat.

Kate, Evelyn, Mads and I swimming off the boat!

A picture of Kate and our drinks from the reserve.

 

In class on Monday, we watched a video on mining facilities in Brazil that are dumping and intoxicating the Amazon River and the communities living around it. It is intoxicating their water giving them no drinking water as well as contributing to their chronic health issues. We discussed the questions of whether is it ethical and what would I do if I were running these major corporations. If I were in the shoes of these large CEOs and managers, I would try and handle the situation by accepting when we are doing something wrong and taking the necessary steps to become a more ethical corporation. I would try to be as fair to all my employees as possible, but I would also try and make sure that the work my company is doing has very little to no harm on anyone’s standard of living or ruining any nature. I think it would be hard, but these companies are very successful and have the resources to put time and money into these efforts and I think if they did, it would only make them more successful in the long run. For class on Wednesday we had to watch the movie Erin Brockovich which I thought was a very good movie and showed something that we don’t often see. Erin was more concerned about getting these people the justice they deserve exposing PG&E and forcing them to fix their actions. She was willing to give up time with her family being a single mother must have been extremely hard, but if she didn’t help these families that were sick from the contaminated water then who would have?

The internship networking event last Thursday was fun and a great chance for me to meet my classmates and other people’s bosses which was nice to finally put some faces to names about the bosses some of my friends talk about. It was a nice event and I am glad that we had it as a way to connect with our peers and the people that work here! In class, we did a workshop where we redid our resumes and added our summer internship to our resumes. I am glad we got to talk with Gupta about our resumes and he could provide us with some of his expertise because he has read and revised so many resumes throughout his career. I added my internship to my resume and also was able to update my LinkedIn profile to match my resume which I think made them both look better. I am glad we got to spend time working on those. 

We completed organizing our large spreadsheet database of over 50,000 contacts, from both Italian and USA companies. We went through each email and associated a first and last name if possible and helped rearrange and organize these two spreadsheets. We also have started organizing these and putting the correct people on the correct slides, for example, if there is an Italian company that is on the English company tab, we will correct it and move them to their proper tabs. This week, our boss was on vacation so we were able to work from home and it just shows the flexibility and how much we do relies on what our boss is doing. I enjoy working from home, but I honestly like the structure of going into the office every now and then. 

Stayed in Milan this weekend and explored a little bit on my own. I did a little bit of a reset weekend by going to the grocery store and cleaning my dorm as well as exploring the areas around Duomo. Last week my phone broke and I had to spend 4 hours in the Apple store to get my entire display replaced. They tried to tell me that they might not be able to fix it and made me nervous about losing all my data or having to survive the next two weeks without my iPhone would be very hard for me to travel and get home without access to my boarding pass. But after waiting for 4 hours sitting on my computer there, they were able to fix my phone and replace my display without losing any of my data and causing me any other issues. It was an upsetting experience though because I did not drop or crack my phone, I just woke up and the entire screen was all white and would not reset. I never thought I would have to go to and get my phone fixed as well as spend that kind of money getting my phone fixed in a foreign country. Overall though I am glad I was able to manage to get my phone fixed and get to the Apple store by myself without any GPS. 

 

A picture of Duomo!

An acai bowl place I found!

A picture of Galleria Vittorio Emanuele II

A dinner I made for myself! Chicken, sweet potato, and pesto pasta!

This week I was able to share one of my Wall Street Journal discussions about Eli Lilly, the large pharmaceutical company that is one of the largest manufacturers and sellers of diabetes and weight-loss drugs. I did my Wall Street Journal topic about this because I looked into the effects that producing these drugs has on the environment. The process of synthesizing the peptides that go into creating these drugs is nonsustainable for mass production and creates a lot of waste. I originally did not know that and I discussed the topic of is it worth it to create these drugs and distribute them for “weight loss” when there are other more environmentally friendly ways to lose weight. I think it is important for doctors and distributors of these drugs to have them as a last resort option, not be the first thing that is prescribed. Often obesity issues arise in one’s diet and habits and a quick-fix weight loss drug is not going to work in the long-term. 

This week, our boss was not here Monday-Wednesday he was on a work trip so we were able to do work from home. Our main responsibility was to keep going through the database we had and gathering information on people from their emails. For example, we have a list of a bunch of emails, but we do not have the first and last names of the people that go with the email. So Victoria and I are working on going through that large list and extracting the first and last names if they are included in the email and writing it down separately. If they do not have a first and last name in their email then we just skip it. We have paused working on our SIGEP assignment for the week but will get back to working on that on Thursday when we go back into the office. 

This weekend, my friends and I traveled to Nice, France, and on our way back we stopped in Monte Carlo, Monaco. I have been to France already, but only Paris and I have been wanting to go to Nice for a very long time. It was honestly one of the best places I have been. One thing I would note before going is that the beaches are straight rocks and you should probably bring flip-flops or some sort of water shoe if you go there and wear them into the ocean when you go in. I did not know that and only brought sandals that were not waterproof and ended up getting cuts on my feet and knees from the rocks and it hurt walking in and out of the water. But that did not stop me from going in and out of the water multiple times because it was so beautiful. It was so blue and fun to swim in and the waves were not too bad but they also did exist which was perfect. Leaving Nice, a few of us decided to stop in Monaco. It took some convincing because I wanted to go as I recently got into Formula 1 racing, but a few people decided to come with me. It wasn’t the nicest day, but we walked around the Yacht club, the Monte Carlo Casino, and the Famous race hairpin turn, before getting lunch at Nikki Beach. It was fun to walk around and see all the cars and people living in Monaco and all the luxury shops they had there. It was an awesome weekend. 

A picture of the beautiful blue ocean in Nice, France

The french croissants! So yum!

The Monte-Carlo Casino

A picture of some of the boats found in the Monaco Yacht Club!

We watched the documentary on corporations and brought up the discussion of whether are corporations the problem in society. The documentary made a diagnosis that corporations are psychopaths based on their ways of running their corporations and the structure that they have. My group discussed this topic and we concluded that for the most part, corporations are psychopaths because their main motive is creating revenue and they are good at lobbying the government to sway people in power to get the things that they want.  An example would be the large farm corporations that are more concerned with injecting their animals with hormones to make them bigger so they can mass produce these food products not concerned with the quality of the food that they are putting into everyone’s grocery stores and bodies. It was interesting to argue this with my group because some members were so in it that corporations ar 100% the problem and others said it depended on what the corporation was who were their leaders and what were their goals. It is interesting to see other people’s points of view, but I think that there is no way for corporations to also be involved in the government and be able to manipulate the government to get what they want to generate revenue. If corporations were not psychopaths, then why are so many of them investigated for fudging numbers and being involved in antitrust lawsuits, etc? There are so many ways they are still violating so many things and just pay the fine when they are caught.  

In class, we talked about our networking event that we have next Thursday and we were reminded to tell our employers about it so that they will come to it as well. Also, we continued our discussion over how our internships have been going these past few weeks and we talked about what is something that we have been able to notice now being here over a month that a tourist or someone just visiting the country would not be able to notice. And what first came to my mind was the level of equality in my workplace. My boss’s boss is technically the head, and everyone else including my boss and the interns are all on pretty much the same level. We are all respected with our opinions and no one is better than the other based on their rank. I have also realized that there is more respecting the older people here even if they are not higher then you business-wise. It is extremely important to respect the older people including getting up on the bus for them and making sure you use formal greetings with them.

In our internship this week we are still creating an email template to send out to potential buyers for the trade show SIGEP coming up in January. We are waiting on approval from the actual SIGEP team, so we have just been going through our system and identifying potential people we can send out our emails to and preparing everything we need so that when we get the okay from SIGEP, we are ready full force to send out emails. We also have been editing the previous year’s email because it was made in Italian and needs to be translated and edited to make sure it is grammatically correct and professional. I enjoy going to work every day and sitting at a desk with everyone and on Wednesday, we went to our boss’s house again to have lunch and he made us amazing lasagna. It is so fun to have a working relationship yet also build an out-of-work relationship with these people during lunch. 

This weekend on Friday we took a day trip to Venice and on Saturday we took a day trip to Monterosso in Cinque Terre. In Venice, we took a boat through the canals and walked around the entire city looking through some museums and were able to walk through the small streets that had little canals everywhere it was so beautiful to walk through. On Saturday, we decided to go to Monterosso which is a popular beach town in Cinque Terre which was stunning. The clear blue water surrounded by a beach but also surrounded by mountains was unreal. We took the train into Monterosso and came out of the tunnel straight to the beach so it was a small beach town but it was beautiful to be able to relax at the warm beach in the sun. The water was so clear and blue and the town was lovely. For dinner, we got pesto, since Cinque Terre is known for their pesto and it was so delicious to eat and just overall a great experience and a great weekend! 

 

Our group in Venice with post-lunch limoncello

A cat sitting on a bench in Cinque Terre

The view of the beach in Cinque Terre

The boats in the canals of Venice

 

In class we brought up the question of are there solutions that are not market-oriented? In my opinion I think that it is hard to come up with a solution that is not market-oriented. I feel like the goal of businesses and corporations is to identify the needs and desires of their consumers and create products that satisfy those needs. How can a company not be market oriented, who would they be working with / creating a product or service for, etc. Even when a business is working with another business or a government or anyone, those people are their consumers who are looking to be satisfied with their products and services so in my opinion, no there are not solutions that are not market-oriented. 

In class we spent a lot of time on the cultural identity that makes up Italy and the cultural identity that makes up the United States. It was very interesting to see the things we talked about in Italy’s cultural identity. One thing that stood out to me the most was how you rarely see the Italian Flag when walking around outside. I feel like back home in America, there are American flags and flagpoles outside of many schools and businesses everywhere. I liked when we discussed what makes up our cultural identity with the images on the screen of the college pride. I feel like in the United States, getting into college is so important and defines a lot about who you are making up a large part of your identity. Seeing that that is not the case here was very interesting to learn about.   

This week, we kept working on our project waiting on a reply from SIGEP to move ahead with emailing people to reach out to. Our other interns who work in the afternoon started calling people to market SIGEP, but once we are approved to send out emails, Victoria and I will be following up to their calls with emails containing more details and information. Also this week, we had lunch at our boss’s house where he cooked us ravioli and we sat in his kitchen talking for over an hour. It was so interesting to see the inside of an apartment that a family lives in and how it differs from apartments back home. This apartment was a lot bigger than I had imagined and it was beautiful.

Last weekend my friends and I traveled to Florence. We navigated taking the train and renting an AirBnb for all of our group. We had a great time enjoying great food including the famous Florentine Steak which I would honestly say was the best steak I have ever had. We shopped a lot for leather stuff in their leather markets as well because they are known for their leather products. It was so nice to see the differences between Florence and Milan because although Florence is more on the tourist side, I enjoyed it because it felt very different. In my opinion, Milan is very metropolitan with the hustle and bustle of the city, similar to New York in that way. But Florence was completely different, it had smaller streets and more colorful buildings and it was beautiful. I went to the oldest pharmacy in the world called The Officina Profumo-Farmaceutica di Santa Maria Novella. They are known for their perfumes and herbal essencences and it was in a beautiful building. We also went to the Duomo there and it was overall a great trip!

 

 

 

 

Inside the Pharmacy we went to in Florence. Their perfume that they are known for.

The Florence Duomo

My Boss’s cat sitting on his table inside a shopping bag!

A popular wine window in Florence!

I enjoyed talking about ethics in class and I enjoyed our class on Wednesday where we were given different prompts as groups. My group was given a prompt regarding the morals behind banks and institutions making profits off of charging interest when the person receiving the loan is only trying to provide a home for them and their family. I liked that we had to argue for and against because it allowed me to see both sides of the argument. The side that was harder for me to form an argument for was that it is not morally fair for a bank to charge interest because I could only come up with the singular argument that charging the extra interest could prevent families from being able to afford interest and people who are not educated may fall into unethical interest policies because they are not informed enough. I came up with the argument that it is morally fair because that is the society we live in today where the bank providing the loan is taking on the risk and providing a service to a customer. There is the risk involved of not being paid back, so charging interest creates a contract and reason to pay the deadlines so a customer is not charged more interest. 

In our internship class, I was involved in the class debate revolving around ethics. While reading the story regarding the group hiking they ran into a Sadhu who was not in great condition. It was interesting to see the approach of the group how they decided to handle it, and how the main guy decided to continue his hike without the rest of the group while they were taking care of the Sadhu. I personally think that the one member who left the group to complete his own goals was not acting ethically and I think at the end when he was trying to justify it and make up for his actions truly showed that he felt guilty afterward. 

The project we are working on in our internship involves a very famous dessert tradeshow that occurs every January in Italy called SIGEP. Currently, we are tasked with identifying potential buyers and companies who could be interested in the United States and reaching out to them. We are focused on identifying restaurants and food companies that have at least 10 or more restaurants. SIGEP is focused on gelato, bakery items, pizza, and a lot of other desserts so I am focusing on finding more dessert-based companies that could be interested in attending. We also started brainstorming how to handle phone calls and writing emails where we worked with our other interns. We all wrote a separate email and phone calls and then read them anonymously to each other and critiqued them in order to combine the best parts into one email or phone call. It was interesting to see the different styles we all had. 

Last Sunday I stayed in Milan and went to the Dolce & Gabbana: From the Heart to the Hands Exhibition. I personally am interested in fashion and I get really interested in how designer companies have built their empires. Learning about the history of Dolce & Gabbana and seeing the stunning pieces they have designed for specific occasions. The two original designers, Domenico Dolce and Stefano Gabbana represent the expression of the divine that resides in each and every human being, and that stood out to me because they designed clothing to outline the natural beauty of human beings. They showed how they hand-made their items and sewed each and every fabric and gemstone together. I learned that traditionally, the color black was worn by working-class women in Italy, but for Domenico Dolce & Stefano Gabbana black is above all the color of the essence, its purity allowing each woman to affirm her own personality. I loved reading the history and learning more about this brand and I want to look into other museums that are based in Milan. 

 

A pair of shoes and sunglasses designed by Dolce & Gabbana.

A serving of homemade spaghetti!

A picture of the Milan Duomo! Home base.

A picture of some of the black dresses designed by Dolce & Gabbana!

 

This week, I have focused my WSJ post on the sustainability of Deep-Sea mining. A very important and controversial topic that I have heard about, but did not know very well. The article I read highlighted the importance of it, as China is already ahead of us in the mineral race and has access to far more metals than the US does. It also highlighted how people were looking forward to being able to start as Congress approved a 2 million dollar grant for a partner to start exploring the deep-sea mining industry. However, what it did not highlight that I researched more in my other articles was the negative or long-term effects it had on the environment, the ecosystems in the deep sea, and climate change overall. Deep-sea mining emits a large amount of greenhouse gases that are not talked about enough. Also, the process of mining kills large amounts of bacteria and animals living in the deep sea, potentially ruining entire ecosystems with the amount of damage. I thought it was extremely interesting how the WSJ article only talked about the positives and how we need to do it because we are behind and it is necessary for our defense department, but what was not talked about was the negative effects that could have a long-term detrimental effect on the environment and safety of our future. 

In our first class, I learned a lot about the cultural differences between the US and Italy in the workplace. I initially knew coming here that there would be a culture shock and differences in the way we work in the United States, but I did not expect there to be so many differences. For example, it is almost considered rude to not accept coffee when it is offered to you. My employer offered me espresso, and I said no because I don’t drink a ton of coffee, but he looked at me questioning why I said no. Another thing is the flexibility. I have a group chat with my boss and he often is changing what time we come in, when we can leave, etc which is very nice because he is so open about his communication. Another thing is lunch, in the US I have always experienced lunch as a 20 or 30-minute thing where you are just making and eating your food, often by yourself or with whoever is around in between classes or during work. Often in the US, people will eat food while they work or at their office desk. In Italy, which I have already grown to love, lunch is an event, every day around 12-1 pm, lasting an entire hour with the opportunity to sit down and talk with your bosses and coworkers about everything EXCEPT work. I am enjoying learning these differences and finding what I like more whether it be adapting to something new in Italy or if I enjoy my experience working here versus the previous jobs I have had in the US. 

This week, at my internship I have grown accustomed to the company and my bosses. I have thoroughly enjoyed getting to know them on our lunch breaks because that is much more a thing to do here than just doing work with them. A lot of the work I do is going through databases and creating Excel spreadsheets organizing the data for my boss so it is easier for him to read and decide what is useful versus what is not useful. On Tuesday, Victoria and I worked together to create a PowerPoint highlighting what GenUSA could do to increase their subscription to one of their databases. They pay for a subscription that tells them the amount of people subscribed to their newsletters who are opening their emails and who are unsubscribing but are not using all the things the website has to offer. It was my responsibility to go through the site, find something they are not using, and do research on what it does, how to use it if it is worth it for my boss to put his effort into learning this part of the site, and if it can help him with his marketing strategy.

This week we finished our Italian bootcamp classes where we learned the basics of Italian and also got to practice them during class and ask any questions. After we finished, I took what we learned and tried to put it into practice by communicating very basic Italian while ordering food or in basic conversation. On Saturday, we had our group trip to the Alps, where we took a 3 hour bus ride into the mountains and did a ropescourse as well as hiked a very steep mountain. The hiking was fun, however it was extremely wet an snowy that some of us couldn’t make it all the way to the lake because of how dangerous the last part of the trail was covered in snow making it a steep fall if you make one wrong step. You had minimal space to move and so we did not want to risk it very much. But we still got to see some beautiful views and be in nature which was so fresh. I enjoyed driving through the cute small little town and seeing the cows they were so cute. I am looking forward to traveling next week!

An image of the cows on the hills in the Swiss Alps!

The beautiful view overlooking the water and the town.

A flower shop I walked past on my way to IES.

A view from the hike of the mountains and clouds.

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.

Ricotta and Spinach Pasta from our trip to Lake Maggiore.

A view out the window of one of the islands on our Lake Maggiore trip.

This is one of the other islands that had beautiful peacocks.

A picture of the beach we went to in Varazze, Italy.

As we have started preparing for our trip to Milan this summer and talking more about the classes we will be taking and things we will be doing, I have been thinking about my expectations for this program! My expectations for the Corporate Social Responsibility class we will be taking with Dr. Gupta are to learn more about how to keep up with current events and also more importantly to learn about what goes into a company and how important it is to companies to have a social responsibility. I am intrigued to learn what it means for a company to be socially responsible and what a company does to be less/more socially responsible.

My expectations for the internship seminar are to learn how to be successful when preparing for all things internship. From submitting applications and completing potential HireVue’s as they are becoming more popular, to having what you need to get that first interview and be successful through the process. I am looking forward to learning how to prepare for specific interviews and how to navigate the process of securing an internship in the future. For my major, a lot of internship applications have already come out and people are already applying and doing interviews, I am excited to take this class because I don’t fully know what makes an interview successful vs unsuccessful and what a company is looking for in your resume and interviews.

The actual internship that I will have in Milan, I don’t know what to expect as I’ve never had an internship before especially not in another country. But I expect that my internship experience will provide me with experience that I can use in my everyday life, but also that it will teach me skills that cannot be taught in the classroom, such as when you are faced with real issues not just in-class examples. I am also looking forward to getting experience in a corporate and more professional setting and learning how to navigate working for a company and everything that goes along with that. I am looking forward to this internship as a great learning experience to help prepare me for future internships.

Lastly, my expectations for being in Milan are that I fully immerse myself and learn as much about their culture as I possibly can. I want to learn about their language, their customs, and what they do that maybe could benefit me and I could take into my own life. As a person who loves to travel, I am also expecting to travel a fair amount on the weekends, whether it be with the group, with a few members of the group, or maybe with one other person, I truly want to make the most out of this experience and see and do all that I can do in the short two months that we are there. I am planning to do every trip the group is doing but I also want to do even more then that and explore neighboring countries and cities that I haven’t been to before and learn so much about every culture I immerse myself into.