My experience abroad greatly enhanced my career goals as well as my global mindset. Through participating in this program, I gained invaluable insights and experiences with the business practices and culture of another country - a lot of which differed greatly from the practices and culture of my home country such as experiencing a company that has a high context and long-term oriented mindset. Similarly, these experiences added to my academic pursuits by allowing me to gain a more in-depth understanding of different business practices, and how business varies between different countries. For instance, some of the topics I have learned throughout my time at the Broad Business College varied slightly from the business practices that companies in Japan use.

Additionally, this experience helped me learn how to communicate and travel in a country that is a non-English speaking environment. While navigating the subway or shopping in different areas of the country my friends and I had to adapt and learn how to communicate in a country that is a non-English speaking society. At first, we relied on Google Translate, but eventually learned essential phrases that helped us navigate our way around as well as finding technology that would translate for us as we were talking. I believe that this experience helped me greatly improve my ability to communicate and travel to non-English speaking environments, and also taught me how to approach traveling to other countries that have a non-English speaking environment.

On a personal level, this experience has greatly changed my perspective on the world and my goals for the future. Before this program, I had never traveled outside of the United States. Since I was able to fully immerse myself in the culture and traditions of a new country that differed from my own, my global perspective and mindset immensely broadened. Furthermore, before this program, I had dreamed of working internationally during my lifetime. Going on this program reinforced this goal of working internationally while also showing me what that could realistically look like in the future. While on the program I had the opportunity to talk to several MSU alumni that have moved to Japan which allowed me to gain invaluable insight and advice on working internationally, as well as the challenges that come along with it such as the initial language barriers and culture shock that alumni have experienced.

Name: Kylie McClung
Status: Senior
Major: Marketing
Hometown: Mason, Michigan
Program: Business and Culture in Japan