Bilan à mi-chemin

I have some time to kill in my hotel room in Dublin, time for some writing! –

Now that the first year is over and the second year in the US is approaching, I would like to share some thoughts about this program, this experience so far. What an interesting experiment! This program mixed up many different profiles which makes it very interesting to compare them to each others. First, there are 3 main nationalities, Americans, Swedes, French, and some “minor” nationalities (Lina is German, Maksim is Ukrainian, Camilo is Colombian). Second, there are three different types of schools: a private university (DePaul), two public universities (LiU and WiU), and a business school (ECE). Third, whereas DePaul’s CTI is specialized in Information Systems and Technologies (with the exception of Connor, studying film), the three other universities enrolled business students to this program. Last but not least, the American students are divided between one university from a big city (DePaul) and one from the countryside (WiU). In addition to these four points, the different students show very different personalities, it goes without saying that living in this tiny Babel tower is very rich.

I don’t know what I should start with to summarize what I observed during the last 10 months. Let’s start with academic considerations. For this point, all three nationalities are VERY different. Swedes seemed to be the best students, hard workers, very serious and organized; they could travel during the week end and still be at school on Monday with their homework done. They are also much better than French for languages (I will skip the comparison with Americans for that point… J )! All Swedes have perfect oral skills in English (sometimes written was not as good), as well as a very strong third language, usually German or French. On the other side, Americans were not hard worker, but usually very smart and participating to discussions all the time. They seemed not used to spend hours and hours to study, but rather have a solid content that they understand and therefore remember easily, they have a very critical mind, asking relevant questions, and know a lot of concrete business. This is my explanation why some Americans were complaining about the academic level of the classes provided in France at first, because they are more used to teachers that make the work easy for us to remember, whereas in Europe they expect you to figure out stuff by yourself.

Although the French students are not as smart or organized than the rest of the groups, everybody did fine this year. I think that it is mostly due by the way we work, less organized but much more reactive. We don’t usually stress if we are a little late and approaching the deadline, whereas it seemed to me that Swedes had trouble working out of the organized and structured way; Americans tended to lose hope and blame the system sometimes. What surprised me is how sometimes we can be very positive toward things, probably because we are very happy of the situation; I think it helped us find the motivation to get things done when clock was running. In a whole, Americans are the faster to get the work done, the Swedes the slower, but the result is very different.

Americans are much more confident than Europeans, especially the DePaul guys because they are very skilled at what they do. If you tell one of them that he is wrong, you’d better have a solid explanation! I sometimes felt that it was a little arrogant, though they often tell you when they don’t understand something. Americans and French were better for everything that was concrete, like Management Control’s case studies, whereas the Swedes were much better for more academic work.

Concerning social behavior, there are also many interesting observations to make. It is amazing how Americans are at ease with people they barely know. Whereas Depaul students used to be more “individual”, Western Illinois’ students used to hang out together all the time! That is probably because IS or IT guys might be used to work alone rather than in a team (but I am not sure about that) compared to business students who are used to work as groups. They talk to you as if they had known you for years! They like to party, joke, ask questions about curiosities of our country. The Swedes too are very very friendly, but not as “open” as the Americans. They are extremely nice with you even when they don’t know you but without being “intimate” (not sure the word is accurate).

to be continued...