Can an international internship change the course of your life?

I joined Shanghai Talk magazine as an assistant editor intern in their China office in January 2006. I had just graduated from University in the United States and was in need of an adventure while gaining professional experience before starting my MBA. China had it all. I had learned Chinese at University and was aware of the immense economic development the country was currently going through.

I had a fantastic time during my internship, had plenty of chances to meet new people through media events, had my articles published and most important, I got a peek of what my future career would be.

While in China, I received my admission to Missouri-Columbia school of journalism, generally considered one of the top journalism schools in the world, well- known for its “Missouri Method.”

I was all set; my internship would come to an end at the end of May and I would head back to the United States during the summer to start my masters program.

Three days before leaving Shanghai, I was scheduled to have dinner at a South-East Asian restaurant. I had met the owner through an interview during my internship and wanted to catch-up before leaving China for good.

The event that changed the course of my young life was about to happen. I was about to leave the place around 1 am, when the owner asked me if I wanted to stay in Shanghai to start a new restaurant with him. He gave me 24h to think about it.

I was bewildered, but very excited about the prospect of learning to do business and enter the “real-life”.

After a sleepless night, I gave him my answer. My internship in Shanghai did change the course of my life, for good.

 

Studies show living abroad improves management skills

I was always hopeful that my long stint in Asia was giving me skills that would help me become a better leader and was excited when I found a few studies reassuring me that there are many positive effects of living abroad. One experiment held by professors William Maddux, Adam Galinsky and Carmit Tadmor on students from Northwestern’s Kellogg School asked MBA students to solve a behavioral test.  The test, called the Duncker candle problem, tests the ability to think creatively. I tried the quiz myself and am happy to be able to say that I was able to find the solution, in fact I think I found 2. The test went on to find that the longer a student spent living in an international setting, the more likely they were to be able to come up with the creative solution. This ability to think more creatively gave them the ability to take on and overcome challenges more easily and effectively, leading to quicker promotion rates. The three professors also found that traveling abroad alone was not enough to improve creative thinking, and that people had to spend significant time to adapt to the foreign culture to really be able to pick up these skills.

Another study showed that people who were able to incorporate the foreign cultures into their own identities were able to outperform and were perceived better achieving than managers that could only identify with one culture. In essence, these bicultural managers were able to score much higher when testing for integrative complexity, which is believed to help people perform better in their jobs. By performing better, they were able to get promoted more quickly and become managers to their peers. The same study showed that bi-culturals were also more likely to create new products than their mono-cultural counter parts.

Although there are tons of challenges that come with moving abroad even for a short time, the benefits are not limited to just experiencing new cultures but could give the participants the opportunity to pick up abilities and skills to help them achieve success in their careers. It is important to remember that in order to get the maximum effects, participants must make sure to really interact with the environment and really identify with the new foreign culture.

When am I going to use this in the real world?

I have asked myself this question more than once when I was at school. Like most students of my age, I learnt to quietly absorb pages of contents without really understanding why I was doing so, except than to obtain a degree which would set me free from school and supposedly open my career path.

I didn’t know when, where and how I would have a chance to start applying my school learning’s into real-life work situations.

One would say that it is never too late to get work experience; today I would emphasize that it is never too early.

I had my first encounter with work while participating in internships at different companies during the summer. I was 18. Waking up at 4am every day quickly opened my eyes to what work really was. I can’t say that I liked what I was doing, but I did learn quite a bit. Mainly, I learned what I really wouldn’t want to be doing in the future.

I also realized that I was lacking many important skills: communication, decision-making, organization.

Yes, I could write and speak, do my math properly, but I was not able to use much of what I learnt at school. School left me with groundings, now it was up to me to absorb the rest like a sponge. I believe there is no better way to do so than to gain work experience through internships or summer jobs as early as possible.