Nowadays
companies, organizations, and universities are all pursuing international fame
and corporate image, which means the companies’ cooperation with other foreign
countries and interest groups. Companies hire workers from different countries
and expect their national employees to speak with many different languages. It
seems that the more foreign languages are taught in Finnish Universities, the
course contents include elements from different cultures and many courses are
taught in English. These courses for international students are good
opportunities to cooperate with other fellow students from all over the world.
Students
should take an advantage of these kinds of situations and think, how rich of an
opportunity there is to become acquainted with these cultures and cultural differences.
Of course the content of the course can consist of different group works and by
this way students will have an opportunity to get to know each other well. But
also the students should be open-minded to learn different cultural habits and
behaviour because it might be very useful in the future. The companies, where
the students will be working someday, are becoming more and more international by
hiring employees from different cultures and expanding their businesses abroad.
During
their studying time, which is are a short period of their life, students could
collect precious information of other cultures’ ways of doing business. Then before
they step into the working life and start their career, they could learn some
tacit knowledge of other cultures. Also it would be very important to create
connections, networks or even make friends with exchange students because you never
know what job opportunities the future has in store for you. I would encourage
you to stay open-minded, social and be excited to learn at least one new
foreign language during your studies, to take the advantage to spend a semester
abroad as an exchange student and by this way to cross the cultural borders.
Text: NL, a student of Independent Study in English course
