How often do we take someone’s advice? How often do we listen to someone’s suggestion? Seeking and giving advice are very important parts of effective leadership. According to the Harvard Business Review, “When the exchange is done well, people on both sides of the table benefit.”
Pavel Novak already knew what he wanted to teach at South Kent School a few years before he officially arrived from the Czech Republic. He thought it would be important to tell his students at the all-boys boarding school in western Connecticut about what it was like growing up in communist Central Europe.
“I said I would like to share my first-hand experience with life in a totalitarian regime–propaganda, brainwashing, etcetera. At that time, I didn’t know it would be such a hot topic,” he said. “I was prepping for it before my arrival here, and then it turned out it was more than a little important to talk about it.”
Tall and tan and young and lovely…
…goes the opening line of “The Girl from Ipanema,” one of the most covered songs in modern music history. Originally performed in the bossa nova style, the one-hit wonder has been adapted to classical compositions, performed by punk bands, and jammed by jazz legends.
So, what does that have to do with our recent leadership development workshop for Austrian youth? In short, everything.
“The starving four-month-old pup had several wounds and was much too young to care for himself.”
This was the sign we saw about Leo, a sea lion who was abandoned in Ocean Shores, Washington. I never imagined he’d come to mean much more to me and the group with whom I was traveling cross-country. But big and bizarre things happen when you’re traveling with 22 young marine professionals. And sometimes that includes adopting a sea lion.
When a library houses the world’s largest Shakespeare collection, including 260,000 printed books and 60,000 manuscripts dating as far back as the late 13th century, it needs a team of conservators dedicated to keeping them intact. That’s where the Folger Shakespeare Library’s Conservation Lab comes in. They’re the ones who ensure that we’re still able to enjoy books, manuscripts, and art on paper from hundreds of years ago.
It takes many years of practice to know how to best treat a damaged manuscript or rebind a book that is literally falling apart at the seams. That’s why for Folger Shakespeare Library, and other similar institutions, interns are crucial.
Five German students recently spent six weeks interning for members of the U.S. House of Representatives as part of the Congress-Bundestag Youth Exchange for Young Professionals’ (CBYX) Congressional Internship Program.
The students were selected from among a group of 73 CBYX Fellows from Germany currently spending a year studying, interning, and living with American hosts as part of this longstanding U.S.-German exchange program, which is joint funded by the German Bundestag and U.S. Department of State.
Since 1998-99, the Congressional Internship Program has provided 85-plus CBYX Fellows the chance to learn directly about U.S. government and policy-making through this unique personal and professional experience.
We recently caught up with our five congressional interns to find out what it was like interning on the Hill in this inauguration year.
These are the sights and sounds that fill the air on race day at the Sebring International Raceway in south-central, Florida. But for one of Cultural Vistas’ Train USA interns, Canadian Tiffany Lodder, racing is about more than fast cars and loud motors. It’s about developing relationships and giving back to the community. For Tiffany, racing is a passion on which she is building her career.
Tiffany has been a fan of motorsports since her childhood. She recalls watching the Daytona 500 and the Indianapolis 500 with her father, an avid stock car racer who initially inspired her passion for motors and speed.
Julian Neumark, a German student, walked down the escalator into his new city of Madison, Wisconsin to see a family of unfamiliar faces. Vinny, his brother-to-be, was wearing a button down shirt tight around his neck. While Julian later learned Vinny had just gotten off work at a pharmacy, his first thought was “hopefully he’s not too weird.”
1984, a year usually associated with the dystopian novel of the same name, was anything but dystopian for 48 American college students.
It was the year Steve Jobs rolled out the first Macintosh computer, a box-like machine that had no memory built in. Total sales for cell phones were 7,000, up from 0 in 1983. Ghostbusters, starring Bill Murray, was the top grossing film. As a duet, Paul McCartney and Michael Jackson topped the pop charts, as did a man from my home state of Minnesota, Prince. Ronald Reagan was reelected, and the Winter Olympics were held in Yugoslavia, a country that no longer exists.
My 47 “classmates” and I were the pilot participants in a new program, the Congress-Bundestag Youth Exchange for Young Professionals.
Young and idealistic, we were wide open to what would come from the program that had chosen us, which had promised us each a year of school, work, family life, and adventure in the Bundesrepublik Deutschland. The BRD, also known as West Germany.
Culture Shock: the feeling of disorientation experienced by someone when they are suddenly subjected to an unfamiliar culture, way of life, or set of attitudes.
This is what I thought I would experience when I arrived in India for a summer internship as a Cultural Vistas Fellow. What I found instead was a culture that, shockingly, seemed familiar. Let me explain: I had never traveled to India before, but I had traveled to Mexico. To my surprise, I realized there’s a great likeness in Mexican, Mexican American, and Indian cultures. Three different cultures that are on opposite sides of the world have more in common than one would think. Here are the ways I felt at home in a “new” country.
