Discussion 2:Prompt 1: Describing your internship site. Tell us a little about the organization where you are interning, and a little about business / industry you’re in. Discuss how various “academic disciplines” are defined and represented at your organization. What I’m looking for here is how knowledge and skills are distributed across the organization – By project? By department? By position? What are some of the most important / valued knowledge and skills in this organization / career field? What transferable skills are in the highest demand (i.e., communication, team skills, computer skills, etc.). How is the organization structured? How are departments, groups, teams structured / organized (as applicable)?

This summer, I am interning at Bohemia Public Relations, specifically working with BPR Travel, the section of the company that helps clients create and prepare trips either for personal, incentive, or informational purposes. This company is owned by one man, Tomas Pochop, who began the company 22 years ago. I haven’t had the opportunity to speak with Tomas much about why he started the company and his vision behind his brand at this point in time of my internship. The travel agency industry in Prague is pretty developed, there are a few companies that would be recognizable amongst the people who live or frequent Prague. Specifically, the company I’m working with, creates the entire package rather than only focusing on travel. The team is composed of design, travel, financial, marketing, account, and event specialists that focus on creating the overall fluidity that a client would desire.

The most valued skills in this organization and career field are creative, personable, and attention to detail. These skills are extremely relevant and important in this specific career field because it is vital that you are able to listen to the client’s needs and are able to be innovative in creating a travel plan that exactly fits their vision for their personal or professional trip. Communication, team skills, computer skills are all transferable skills that are in high demand in this industry because it is vital to work with an entire team to create a seamless trip without issues. Computer skills are important because this job industry requires long hours of research on the computer to come up with different options for restaurants, things to do, as well as travel routes including transportation.

The organization is structured in various groups where everyone has a specific job. There are two people in each “department” of the company, with only 21 employees in the company. There are finance, design, travel, marketing, and event departments in the company and people generally work separately on their individual task but the departments work together to have a checks and balances between each other to ensure fluidity among communication. Prompt 2: Describing roles and responsibilities. Tell me about your primary job responsibilities AND the primary job responsibilities of your supervisor. Also, now that you have gotten started at your internship, what kinds of opportunities exist for you - with respect to gaining experience, enhancing your intercultural communication and competence, and integrating well into your internship environment? What can you be doing better to help you achieve these goals? (Be specific!)

My primary job responsibilities include assisting and advising clients on travel information, helping them on selecting the best travel plan and schedule according to their needs. I also work on making arrangements for accommodation or booking tickets via phone, email or online system. I also focus on team work and ad hoc problem solving, searching for the best solution and key information. I frequently research recent travel information, locating new areas of tour interest, and exploring them for travel. I help and contribute my own ideas to aid client’s in the thinking process of creating a new trip. I aid in planning schedules and whole travel itineraries for incentive travel as well as for individuals.

My supervisor mainly focuses on the same tasks that I do, but on a larger scale. As a project manager, her tasks revolve around the client. She is constantly speaking with either the client or Tomas, the company owner, about sudden changes or wishes and is reliable to find a solution. She is also managing all of the trips and ensuring all travel plans run efficiently and according to schedule where transportation, accommodation, dining, product design for incentive travel, etc. is concerned.

Now that I have gotten started at my internship, I have the ability to gain experience in the travel field as I learn how companies communicate with each other when creating a travel plan rather than just booking a personal trip. I have also learned the various aspects of cultural differences between the United States and Czech Republic, as there are language and culture barriers. Throughout this experience, I have learned the importance of understanding the organizational culture at every workplace that you encounter, so you are able to know how the certain company functions during various times and as a whole. To help become more knowledgeable in these areas, I will be traveling to the main office of my company, so I am able to observe the environment that the workers are in and how they manage different aspects of their company such as stress, power, and teamwork.

Prompt 3: Identifying your cultural perceptions. If you have yet to do so, please read the cultural sojourner article under the Learning Module 2 / Readings tab. No doubt that you, as a cultural sojourner, are experiencing the daily recognition that there are many differences between USA and the Czech Republic. Tell me something about your perceptions regarding Czech customs and behaviors that you have noticed. What makes you feel comfortable and at ease? Which aspects of the culture and/or Czech behaviors make you feel anxious and uncomfortable? Make a few explicit connections to the article (so that I can see you have read it) - in particular, some aspects of the cultural transition cycle, and the preparation and sojourn stages as related to your own experience.

After being in the Czech Republic for three weeks, I have had the time to be able to experience and understand the differences of Czech and American people. The first week our group was here, we had the opportunity to receive tours from various Czech people that gave us an idea of the history of why people are the way they are here. They informed us that because of the Communist regime that was in place for 40 years following WWII, the Czech people learned to be very private about their lives and that they don’t communicate with “small talk” or tell people about their religious views or their families. The people that originate from this country

are not known to be the friendliest people that you will meet while in Europe, but it isn’t to be taken offense to, because it is a continuation of generations past that have affected the way the Czechs are towards those that they don’t know. I have noticed that in various restaurants in Prague that I have visited that the servers are not trying to be extremely attentive or friendly to your experience. This could be for a multitude of reasons, but it is something that I really do enjoy about being here because it has taught me to slow down and enjoy my meal patiently. I am also very comfortable with the way Czech people keep to themselves- it doesn’t bother me that when walking on the street, it is rare to make eye contact or acknowledge someone. In America, people are extremely invasive, it is common to share a large majority of your life on social media (no age restrictions) and because of that, people are curious. When you walk along a street, people are looking to see how you’re dressed, what brand your clothes are, and what you’re carrying in your hands. It makes me comfortable to know that people don’t really care what I’m doing unless someone I’m with is being overtly noticeable.

There is nothing that directly makes me uncomfortable about Czech people. Having a language barrier, especially in the workplace, can be frustrating and defeating at times because it feels as if there is no way to communicate other than with words. Not knowing how to respond to a question is also difficult. Being in another country that speaks a different language always comes with the possible language barrier, depending on how many people know and practice it. Prompt 4: Cultural Engagement. Please reflect on your perception of how effectively you are “engaging the culture of the Czech Republic.” Be sure to respond to ALL of the questions! Do you seek out unusual cultural experiences? Do you strive to talk to as many native Italian people as possible? Are you forming healthy friendships with some of the locals? Or do you spend most of your free time with your ASU / USA compatriots or other internationals living in Prague? Based on your time here in Prague thus far, what specific cultural adjustments and changes in your thinking and behavior have you noticed? How do you think your language skills (or lack thereof) are either helping or hindering your ability to engage culturally? Finally, what goals can you set for yourself for the remainder of the program to become more culturally engaged? Please be specific and use examples. Since I have been in the Czech Republic, I have been seeking out unusual cultural experiences. It can be difficult to want to go try something new during the week after working every day, but as a group we have worked on finding new activities for us to do that aren’t popular tourist activities. It has also been really helpful to be open-minded to the people that you meet in different restaurants/bars, because if someone is willing to have a conversation with you, I guarantee you will learn something new about them or about things to do. I am forming relationships with my supervisor at work, but I have not had the opportunity to meet many Czech people that speak English long enough to be able to form a relationship with them. I do spend most of my time with my compatriots living in Prague, but most of the time we go try

new places and experience something different than we had before. It is very comfortable to have a group of people around you that understand your innuendos and the way you speak because it doesn’t challenge you to try anything new, but I find that going out with close friends with a goal of meeting people always ends up a positive experience.

Based on my time in Prague thus far, the specific cultural adjustments in my behavior and thinking that I’ve noticed are the amount of stress. I’ve come to realize that a lot of the pressure that I put on myself are cultural, because when I got here, I was worried and flustered about where I was going to get everything I needed. When I realized that there weren’t stores like Target or Walmart in Prague, I felt anxiety because I’m so accustomed to going to one store to pick up my essentials and anything else I “need.” Once I adjusted here, I became more comfortable not feeling like I need things right away. Since I’ve been here, I’ve spent so much time with other students and people here and not focusing on social media or media in general, so I don’t feel a societal pressure to get everything that I deem necessary to live and it’s relieved me of pressure that I didn’t realize I was carrying with me. In terms of other changes in thinking, I’ve begun to look at the world as a much smaller place than before, because the world feels tangible. At the same time, I’ve really come to learn about cultural differences and the reality of them and how important it is to remain mindful and pay attention to where people come from and why they are the way they are.

My language skills do hinder me, but I believe that no matter how hard I would have tried, the Czech language is extremely difficult to learn and I wouldn’t have been able to fully master it before I came. I’ve been told by multiple Czech people that if you speak poor Czech, it’s often more difficult to understand than a completely different language. It does hinder my experience, because I’ve found that it’s difficult to ask people questions because I can never gauge how much English they speak or if they’re comfortable to carry a conversation with me. To become more culturally engaged, I can attempt to ask people more questions to see if they can speak English and see if I can learn something valuable from them while we attempt to have a conversation. I think more often than not, they are more worried to practice for fear of saying something wrong rather than not knowing the actual language. So my goal is to attempt to engage in more conversations with Czech people.

Prompt 5: Focus Group 1 Reflection.  Now that you have completed the first focus group meeting, reflect on your key learnings and "aha" moments that resulted from that meeting (and your preparation for the meeting). What were the most powerful insights you achieved? What do you wish we had covered more thoroughly in the meeting? What ideas or suggestions do you have for making the first focus group meeting an even more powerful experience? What might be some learning goals you would be willing to set for yourself based on our focus group discussions? Again, please be specific and use examples. My key learnings from the meeting include having the realization that we are all experiencing nearly the same thing by interning here in the Czech Republic. We are all struggling with the language barrier as well as the cultural differences between our work environments and supervisors. Ultimately, the main differences between our experiences is the actual work we

are providing to the company as well as the relationships that the supervisors are willing to form with us throughout this program time. Some seem to be more open to conversing and learning about each other, while others are not. Another thing that I thought was interesting in the focus group is that a lot of the three aspects of competitiveness, innovation, and team orientation varied between each of our individual internships, although competitiveness seemed to be a fairly low number for all of us. I think that that is very interesting, because it came up again later in our conversation. We discussed power distance on a scale in relation to the Czech Republic and the United States and there seemed to be a larger power distance in the US versus the Czech Republic in terms of distance between powerful figures and the civilians.

The meeting itself was very interesting to me, I don’t think I would’ve wished to speak about anything further, because we covered a lot of the topics that have been on my mind since we’ve arrived here as I’ve been watching them grow and evolve as my experience has proceeded. I think that maybe instead of offering a set list of questions to answer to come prepared to the focus groups, it could potentially be more beneficial to give the students ideas to consider and come with thoughts. It seemed very structured as a focus group to go through each person’s experience rather than just having a discussion. I also understand that the focus groups are graded and as a professor, you would like to encourage everyone to speak and are also running on a time schedule. Overall, I think if they were more discussion based rather than question and answer, it might be more beneficial, but I also think that with the parameters you work within for this focus group, it is great! Learning goals I would focus on based on what I learned in the focus group include being more perceptive to my supervisor and stepping into help more rather than waiting for a task. It is more beneficial to help remove stress rather than placing It in this situation, because I am attempting to be helpful and initiate things. Also, I think that it is extremely beneficial to always ask questions, because more often than not, because of the language barrier, I can misinterpret the tone of voice or the task at hand.

Prompt 6: Decontextualizing and thinking analogically. Offer up something that represents your experience thus far in Prague. It can be a photograph, a poem, song lyrics, a piece of artwork. If you're using a photograph here, you’re not actually showing a picture of yourself. Instead, you are finding some other object, image and/or words to characterize your experience thus far here in Prague. If necessary, you can attach a file with your post. Explain the connection and why you chose it.

This picture correctly depicts my time in Prague because it shows the bridge that is entering the city. This trip has been an extreme period of growth for me, I have felt growth in ways that I never knew were possible before I came here. This shows a connection to me because it depicts me being on an experience that I have never been on before and embarking on a new adventure. I’ve had an amazing opportunity to explore a new city, meet new people, and experience different things. There are so many cultural differences between the United States and Prague, and I am so grateful to be able to experience the bridge between the both of them and create this experience for myself.