Going into week seven with my internship with the Centre for Fundamental Rights at the Hertie School. The focus on this week’s topic is on reflecting on communication differences. The past week has been a busy week at the Hertie School. I have helped the school this week with the operations of the Graduation Ceremony for the class of 2025. I have spent the whole day coming across people from all different parts of the world to celebrate the accomplishments of the graduate students.
This week has been the most challenging when it comes to communication. This event gave me an insight into the complexities of cross-cultural communication. The graduation ceremony brought students, faculty, and families together to celebrate. Many of the people who attended were international, with many different language barriers. It was an opportunity to learn from this event on how to deal with communication with other cultures. It was also a nice experience to see how people socialize with one another verbally and in written form. There was also a chance to learn how the school can improve in future years.
In the previous weeks leading up to the event, the communication team had multiple tasks at hand. The first part dealt with registering students and families before the event started. This also included needing to ensure that seating assignments were made accordingly. The communications had to work with the examination office to make sure that students had fulfilled all requirements. There were also designated seats reserved for people who needed additional assistance. I spent most of the time working with the information desk. I assist guests who need further instruction when checking in. If there was someone who did not have a seat, I would look through the system and assign them to any available open spot.
During my past seven weeks of interning, I have noticed that the German culture around communication is very different from the United States. I have already mentioned this in past blog posts. Generally, Germans are very direct in their communication. During the graduation event, I have interacted with people with different cultural backgrounds. It was interesting to see how different people reacted in certain situations. During the graduation, I assisted to registration team. This involved making sure that graduates and their guests were checked in. There were also on-the-spot changes that needed to be made regarding guests. Some graduates might have had or added more people to their ceremony. This means that we had to find seating places for them in the auditorium.
This involved working closely with people in the registration and seating teams. It was challenging because some people spoke different languages. When it came to helping guests out, many of them spoke different languages. This involved needing to locate certain people on the team to translate or communicate what was going on. This was a learning experience for dealing with a diverse range of people in a large event. This was a high-context situation that involved being alert at all times. There were also high-profile individuals who were speaking at the event. This required working with the security team to ensure the safety of all the speakers.
There was also technological equipment that needed to be learned before the event to ensure a smooth entry process. The communications team taught a lesson to the registration team to make on-the-spot seat assignments. This would automatically notify the seating team of seat changes and openings. This was useful for the registration team to learn when it came to helping last-minute guests.
The day before the event, my team worked from six in the morning to eleven at night, working to prepare for the graduation the next day. The start of the day was working with the communication team to get are the paper paperwork and copies prepared. We were in communication with the examinations office to have real-time status of students who were able to graduate in time. We also had to work closely with the event planners due to constant changes in seating assignments. There would student who registers a certain number of guests and then changes or cancels. There were also guests who needed special seating conditions. If there were some handicapped we needed to make sure there was accessibility. Later in the day, many of Hertie staff spent hours loading up a truck with all the graduation materials. The truck was then taken to the locations of the graduation. We spent hours unloading and placing material in the event center.
Agrawal A #01