My STEP signature project was a Fisher Corporate Consulting project in Madrid, Spain working for a company named Sacyr. Throughout the span of my project I worked on a team of four working to advise the company on ways in which to make the office more technologically advanced while also giving general recommendations to increase productivity.
In result of completing this project my world view changed in many ways specifically with the way I view myself and my capabilities. While working on this project I thought that I would have a very hard time adjusting to the different office culture within Spain, yet by the end of the project I had proven my ability to adjust to the different environment. Going into the project I worked on having little assumptions about what the project and my interactions with others would look like. In result of the completion of this project my world perspective has drastically broadened as I have never lived out of the country for a period of time before. I am now much more focused on leaning about the culture of other places and why people may have different customs than that of the United States.
One key relationship that shaped my transformation in result of this project was the one between my direct manager and I. At first when coming into the office I found it hard to relate to my boss as it felt as if he was a stern man who did not have much concern about the United States. By the end of the project I was able to clearly communicate with my manager and understand more about the communication techniques that he saw as normal and understand them better. This relationship really helped me to feel more comfortable interacting with strangers outside of the daily work we had assigned within the company.
An additional activity that contributed to my understanding and helped to open up my assumptions of what I thought working with the company would be like was conducting interviews to a few of the other employees within the company. Throughout these interviews my team and I were able to directly interact with a larger group of employees than we were used to interacting with within the office. The majority of the individuals we interviewed for our project were younger in their 20 -30s and it was refreshing to learn what perspectives they had as young adults living in a different country. These interviews helped me to break down any assumptions I had about the different work and lifestyle I thought people in Spain would embody and I was able to talk to these employees as they were my friends having a casual conversation.
Finally, the most empowering interactions I had while working on this project was that of the ones with the other Ohio State Students also working on projects within Madrid. Working together to navigate the city and complete job tasks I was able to be relied upon as a leader. This experience allowed me to boost my confidence within my abilities to completely go into an experience not knowing anyone or much about where I am going to live and come out of it feeling as if I have accomplished so much. I found that many of my peers also looked to me to plan things to see such as history museums and they appreciated my desire to learn as much about Madrid as possible.
This transformation is significant within my life because I have always questioned my ability to potentially work abroad in the future and after this trip I have gained the confidence to know I would be able to do well living abroad if the opportunity presented itself. Now that I have actually worked with a company and learned about the culture within Spain, I feel that I can push myself to continue to learn more about the history and traditions while I am back in the United States. This project has reignited the excitement within me to learn about places unlike what I am used to living around at home. I now want to challenge myself to continue to learn and travel as much as I possibly can and continue to learn throughout every step of the way. The project was valuable to me in many ways and I am excited to seek out opportunities in the future that can help me in the way this program did.
