Looking back at my international experience, I feel incredibly fulfilled. Although there were ups and downs I am forever grateful I had the opportunity for a global experience like this. I think that living in another country has made me a significantly more open-minded person and hope to bring that into everything I do both personally and professionally back at Pitt.
When I was first leaving for Korea it almost didn’t feel real. I was putting clothes in my suitcase and checking my passport almost on autopilot. It didn’t really even hit me until the plane landed that ‘oh, I’m in another country. One where no one speaks English. And I’m going to work here’.
Once my internship began I started to encounter challenges. There was nothing huge at first, but the daily communication struggles and cultural differences quickly became a lot. The language, especially. None of my coworkers were fluent in English. My boss was the closest, with the other ones varying from zero to able to ask basic questions. I remember feeling very isolated my first week.
Eventually, though, we all figured out a system. I adapted to these challenges by using a translator, changing my communication style, and picking up basic Korean to be able to exist comfortably around the office. By the end of my internship, I had fully assimilated into the culture and felt like a real member of the team.
I was initially given the task of doing market research within the Korean real estate industry to determine a target audience and pricing of the company’s services. From there, I moved on to creating longform and shortform content. I made this content manually and also employed various AI tools to generate shortform content. Then, I was tasked with posting self-promotional activities online on sites like Reddit and Facebook to collect emails. Finally, I was to summarize my findings in a full presentation for my boss and coworkers.
In all, I found this to be a fulfilling experience personally, professionally, and academically. Beginning with personally, I think working in a country with such a different culture to what I am used to really challenged my worldview. I often found myself realizing that a lot of thought processes I had taken for granted were really just my subjective opinion. Many times I found myself having to course correct, read the room, and determine if my knee-jerk reaction would be culturally appropriate in a Korean office environment. As a result of this experience, I feel significantly better prepared to interact with those different than me in both my personal and professional life.
Professionally, this experience has given me the hard skills in order to succeed in my position as assistant marketing manager at The Pitt News next year. The experience creating content and every step of the process (filming, generating, editing, etc) is something I will have to oversee every day at this position. Now that I’ve had a proper professional experience in a marketing role using industry-standard tools I feel significantly more prepared to bring my expertise back to Pitt.
Academically, I would say having hard deadlines in this role will do me well in my future classes. I felt a lot of stress at points, sometimes significantly more than I’ve ever felt for a class at Pitt. Because of this experience, where I managed my stress and turned it into a final result for my supervisor, I will be significantly better prepared when I encounter challenging coursework in the future.
My one key takeaway from this program is as follows: no matter where you go, there will always be challenges. It is up to you whether or not you choose to stay in your comfort zone or push yourself to be the best you can be. I had some of the happiest moments of my life thus far in Seoul, but I also experienced some of my saddest. Sometimes you have to cry on the train on your way home from work to become a more well-rounded person, I feel. I’m very glad I had the chance to experience this– all of this.
I will bring this mindset back to Pitt in everything I do. In my classes, I intend to push myself to not just learn, but deeply understand the content. In my social life, I will keep an open mind and recognize a wide variety of perspectives. Finally, I will work to become the best professional I can be in these next two years.
Thank you to everyone who made this experience possible and supported me along the way. Looking to see what my futures holds at Pitt and beyond!