Now that I have been in Milan for almost two full weeks, I have been able to shift my focus from getting acclimated to my new environment, towards fully immersing myself in the program and culture. I have found Professor Gupta’s course on Corporate Social Responsibility an incredibly interesting topic that presents lots of intriguing questions surrounding how we treat Corporations, what standard we should hold them to, and how they are present in the inter-workings of our society. I found it particularly interesting to learn about how the makeup of a corporation (i.e. the amount of shareholders, composition of the Board of Directors) can have significant influence over holding management accountable for their decisions and the hiring and firing process of higher management. I look forward to getting into more depth within this course because the subject matter is extremely relevant to our society and impacts our every-day lives.

My first week at Gen-USA went smoothly and I have had a great learning experience so far. My first day nerves were immediately eased with how friendly and welcoming all the staff and interns were. I was very relieved to learn that all five of my fellow interns are American as well, so we are able to problem solve together. My boss promotes a community based work environment by treating all employees and interns to lunch every afternoon. We never discuss business at lunch, rather we get to know each other better and simply enjoy the meal. Most of my tasks this week have been doing research on Gen-USA’s clients and entering that information into excel documents. This presents some challenges as lots of their clients are from Italy and their information can only be found in Italian. This has forced me to learn more of the language and rely on some Italian speaking co-workers for assistance. The projects I am working on have taught me to become more proficient in Excel and I can’t wait to learn what next week has in store.

While not working and taking classes during the week, I have been able to utilize the ease of travel in Europe. Last weekend I traveled to Zurich, Switzerland. Zurich was only a three hour train ride from Milan, and seeing the beautiful lakes and mountains filled cows made the ride fly by. I was shocked to learn how drastically different Milan and Switzerland were given their close proximity to each other. For instance, in Zurich they use Franks for currency instead of Euro’s, speak a Swiss dialect of German, dress much more casually, and eat much more meat than in Italy. I was fascinated how two places only three hours apart could feel like they are on opposite sides of the world. This trip opened my eyes to just how culturally rich Europe is and I can’t wait to continue to learn and experience new cultures.