My experience in Vienna, Austria has set the tone for what I want the rest of my life to look like.
While living in Vienna, I had the opportunity to travel to (Budapest) Hungary, (Zagreb) Croatia, (Munich) Germany, (Paris) France, (Florence and Venice) Italy, and extensively within Austria (Graz, Wachau, Hallstatt, Innsbruck, Salzburg and Zell am See). I hope to use my last few weekends here to travel to Czechia (Prague) and Poland (Krakow)! On the weekends when I wasn’t travelling, I was lucky to have many friends visit! Three friends from Pitt who are also studying abroad stayed with me as well as both of my parents.
Through the last 4 months, I feel that I’ve grown immensely both personally and professionally.
By completing group projects with my peers from all over the world and learning from professors from different cultures with varying perspectives I’ve gained invaluable skills in cross-cultural communication. By clearly communicating deadlines and setting expectations as soon as possible, teams can work together despite having different cultural expectations for groupwork. Ultimately, I’ve learned that setting expectations as soon as the project starts is critical for managing group work, especially on a cross-cultural team.
The simple experience of being able to make friends from other cultures and work with other local and international students on projects has significantly increased my competency in cross-cultural communication. I truly believe that this skill will be invaluable in a future career. My experience living in Vienna, Austria will certainly be something I discuss in future interviews!
I plan to incorporate these new skills into my current role as a Professional Development Consultant in the Career Development Office. One of my favorite parts of this role is actively contributing to transfer student’s education as a teaching assistant for Pitt Business’ Bus20 class. Many of the students in these classes are international students. Having the experience, I’ve had now, I feel infinitely more equipped to assist these students both professionally and personally in their adjustment to new culture and new life abroad.
