Internship Blog 3 (March 24 )

These last two weeks have been filled with a great deal of excitement for me. We will soon be in the midst of our annual international week here at Edutus College. I'd like to finish the booklet before international week kicks off so it can be handed out to the various students, professionals, professors, and other individuals that will be in attendance. Earlier in the week I gave a presentation on starting a business. When the professor came to me and asked if I could give this presentation, I was unsure as to how I would accomplish the task at hand. In my personal opinion, working on these presentations simulates real-world scenarios. Once we find employment, we will be assigned various tasks from or supervisors with deadlines. We may not now how to go about accomplishing these tasks initially, but we are expected to complete these tasks by their deadlines in a dilligent manner. I have been told that I am not required to take part in these presentations, but in doing so I satisfy personal goals I have for myself, allow the students to hear english being spoken from a native speaker, and I improve my public speaking skills.

In my presentation I discussed necessary steps potential entrepreneurs should address before they open their business. When necessary I gave examples from a small business that I had started with a few friends back in high school. The presentation went very smoothly. I am no expert within the field of business or entrepreneurship, but I was able to give a productive presentation. I did this by slightly altering my approach; I practiced giving the presentation out-loud, I called on a volunteer from the audience to avoid scanning between the crowd, computer moniter, and screen projection simultaneously, and I also positioned myself as comfortably as possible. I decided to pull a desk up just next to and underneath the projection screen and sit on top of it. I'm aware that this an unorthodox way to give a presentation but I was more comfortable in this stance. If the students see that I am comfortable than it in turn should help them to be more comfortable and will hopefully lead to a higher degree of participation. I believe it also helped to garner the attention of the sudents better (at least initially) while still providing me with an optimum focal point in relation to the seating placement of the students in the class. I remember taking a sociology class back in community college and on the very first day of class our professor stood up on a chair and began to lecture. We had a fairly large class and during that lecture she had attained the attention of every single sudent.

I am thoroughly enjoying my time here a Edutus College. Being here not only is helping me to improve in the areas of public speaking, organization, and preparation, but has also excited many different interests and aspirations of mine. As a geography major, I have an innate curiosity for geography and exploring the world around me. I have an wide interest in topics ranging from population characterstics, globalizaion, natural sciences, mapping, and many more. Geography affords me with the opportunity to study and learn about many of these personal interests I have. Many of the geogrpahy courses I have taken at George Mason have taught me about the different aspects associated within map making, I plan on creating a few different maps of Hungary to incorporate in the booklet I am currently working on.

As previously stated, I have many interests and aspirations. One of those interests is working for the Department of State as a Foreign Service Officer. As a Foreign Service Officer, you are required to live in different countries abroad. Living here in Hungary gives me the opportunity to discover new places, meet new people, and immerse myself in a culture completely foreign to that of my own. Foreign Service Officers are expected to establish and maintain professional relationships with the local populous and represent the United States of America with the highest degree of rectitude and integrity. Being here in Budapest allows me to contribute to my personal and professional development by mirroring these same qualities exhibited within professionals in the foreign service.

Interning in the tourism department here at Edutus has allowed me to explore my interest with potentially starting a business within the tourism industry pertaining to reviewing hostels and owning hostels. I've consulted with the professors a part of the faculty here and they possess the necessary knowledge and background to point me in the right direction. I absolutely love to travel which was the primary reason I chose to be placed within an institution that operates within the field of tourism and travel.

Internship Blog 2 (March 10)

Things are going fairly smooth at my internship in my third week here. I've been assigned a good amount of work and have displayed a good amount of enthusiasm in getting my tasks completed. Over the past week and a half I have completed two presentations for two different professors. All the classes are taught in english which on the surface presents an ideal environment to me to give presentations. However, many of the students are at various levels in their ability to speak english. It's a bit hard to get them to participate, but I believe that they'll begin to speak and participate more as I improve my relations with them throughout the semester.

My first presentation was in a tourism class. The class was learning various terms that involved airport functions and terms. Before I started working on my presentation, I made sure to ask some of the students what they'd like to see in my next presentation. I decided to include pictures of the top 10 most beautiful airports through out my presentation to satisfy their requests and to help maintain their focus throughout the presentation. I also created a jeopardy game in power point on some of the terms my presentation covered and from the current unit they were studying in their textbooks.

My second presentation was with an international business and marketing class. It involved EU and US relations regarding Delta Airlines; how a multinational corporation such as Delta operates within the framework of the EU and some of their business practices with EU based airline companies. I felt that I did a decent job presenting the material, however I was a bit nervous as this was the first time I had met with them.

I was also asked if I could work on a booklet for the college. I decided to accept the challenge and started brain storming on ideas I could use for the booklet. I was presented with a few booklets from other universities and college across Europe, but ultimately I decided to create my own unique design for Edutus. I searched a while for different templates within Microsoft Word and Publisher, but opted for the highest level of creative freedom by using a program called Adobe Illustrator I've used to create maps. I've attached my current cover page to the booklet to this blog post. I still have a good amount of work to do for the cover page, but I believe I've completed the basic design themes that will be expressed not only on the cover page but through out the booklet. I also plan on taking photos of and around the two campuses and incorporating those into the booklet as well. I brought my Canon T3 Rebel (digital still lens reflex) camera with me to Budapest which should provide excellent quality photos for the booklet. I've even asked a few of the students if I could take their pictures and insert them in the booklet. Aside from having simply their photos, I also plan on inserting some statements from them highlighting the academic environment at Edutus and some of the positive experiences they've had there. Not only should this booklet be a well refined product, but I believe it also needs to be designed from a student's view point. Apart from being a student myself, I can also ask the students around Edutus for any of their suggestions regarding the booklet.