1. For my STEP signature project, I participated in an 8-week internship in Madrid, Spain where I worked for a company called LVMH. Louis Vuitton Moet Hennessey (LVMH) is a global company that owns 70 prestigious brands and had 42.6 billion euros revenue in 2017. I worked in LVMH’s Finance department while in Spain where I grew both professionally as well as personally.
2. Spending 8 weeks in Madrid really changed me as a person, I learned more about myself and my aspirations while abroad than I have in any of my schooling. Living and working in Spain changed my view of the world and my understanding of myself. Having to work in an environment where people barely speak English and my spanish wasn’t very strong, pushed me out of my comfort zone and helped me become more confident in my abilities and allowed me to challenge myself in ways I never had before. From my STEP project I was able to advance my language skills, enhance my business skills, and become more independent.Living, working, and traveling to different countries and learning about its diverse cultures really opened my eyes to differences in people, their environments, and their subsequent lifestyles.
3. Working in a foreign environment, with foreign people, who didn’t speak my native language was definitely a large factor in my transformation. Going in with a very intermediate level of Spanish and my coworkers speaking a minimal amount of English made my job an uphill battle from the start. I quickly had to learn key words and phrases and often think harder about what I was going to say before I said it. Over the course of these 8 weeks, I both learned more Spanish and became more confident in my abilities to communicate with my coworkers. I also had to overcome the barrier of learning Excel in Spanish which meant new words, new functions, and new formulas, but I am proud to confidently say I am now both fluent in Excel in English and Excel in Spanish.

Being in Spain gave me an amazing opportunity to be able to travel on the weekends. I was able to see different parts of Spain, Portugal, and even Africa. Having the ability to travel to so many amazing places allowed me to gain confidence in my ability to be independent while also allowing me to open my eyes to different cultures and everything the world has to offer. Having traveled to many countries in Europe before, living in Spain came as more of a culture shock than any other country I had previously visited which I can attribute mostly to my expectations. Upon my arrival I assumed everyone would speak English and I would just need a little Spanish to get around and I thought the culture and practices would be very similar to the United States, but they were not. Hardly anyone spoke English and their culture was way more relaxed and different from the United States. Living in Spain allowed me to fully immerse myself in its culture which gave me an advantage to quickly adapt to my new home allowing me to learn even more about it and its people.

The biggest culture shock and eye-opener for me was my weekend trip to Morocco. Their male-dominated lifestyle was very different from anything I had ever experienced before. We traveled in a tour group with many other Americans from our program, but our tour guide stated that you would never want to explore on your own especially if you were a girl. We didn’t see many girls on the streets and if we did they were completely covered head to toe. Even though we had pants on and our shoulders covered almost every man we passed made a comment to someone in our group. I had never felt so exposed in my life. This culture shock really opened my eyes to the differences between cultures and lifestyles. After the first few hours I was able to adapt better to the differences in this country more than I would have had I not just spent 6 weeks on my own in Spain. My new-found level of independence made me never want to stop exploring and see everything the world has to offer.

4. This experience helped shape me professionally, personally, and academically. Professionally, I learned tons of new excel skills, finance terms, and how to understand and create a multitude of budget, profit and loss, and expense reports. I also gained valuable communication and relational skills which will help me both when working with others in my personal life and in my professional life as I pursue a career in consulting where I will often have to work in group settings. Without this amazing opportunity I never would have been able to learn so much about myself and others. With this internship I also was able to form lasting friendships and significant connections with people I never would have met otherwise. All of these factors have greatly shaped me into the person I have become 8 weeks later.