My name is Kathryn Skipper, Katie for short, and I have the pleasure of attending one of the most beautiful universities in America, the University of Mississippi, though most people know it as Ole Miss. I intend to graduate in May of 2018 with a degree in business management and minor in entrepreneurship, and I will remain at Ole Miss until May of 2019 in order to obtain a degree in risk management and insurance. The summer of 2017 I did an internship in Barcelona with a couple of startup companies so when I saw the advertisement on campus for the IBS trip to Barcelona I knew I had to go. The trip did not disappoint. Every day we went around the city and met with different companies and got a run-down of what each company does and how they do it. We got to learn about many different faces of every company including; marketing, finance, management, and each of their globalization methods. It was so fascinating and we got to enjoy it in Barcelona. It is such a beautiful city with an amazing culture and such welcoming people it does not matter if you have been once or twenty times before it is somewhere you will always want to go.
Hear more directly from Katie:
If you had 60 seconds to convince a friend to attend an IBS program, what would you say?
GO! Being abroad is something you will never understand until you have done it. It is a wonderful life-changing experience. Being able to go abroad with IBS in a structured environment learning about things that really interest you makes it that much better!
What did you learn from your experience abroad? Was it worthwhile?
I learned many things while abroad. Europe has very similar cultures to America, but they also have some very blatant differences. I loved being able to interact with the people of Spain on the streets just as a tourist, but also being with IBS and being brought face to face with people working for companies that could tell you about the culture they have grown up around in Spain.
Did you develop or improve any qualities or skills during the seminar? If so, what were they and how did they develop/improve?
I definitely improved my skill of communication by traveling abroad. When you are in a new place communication can be hard for several reasons, a major one being the language barrier. It is something you do not really think of being a problem until you are in a taxi trying to explain in broken Spanish that you want to go to the Arc de Triomf. Sometimes you just have to get creative! I ended up showing a picture to the taxi driver to be able to communicate where I wanted to go.
If you have any questions email me at: keskipp1@go.olemiss.edu