Final Journal Entry

I think that traveling to Vietnam was an invaluable experience, and one of the best decisions I've made. Not only did I have the opportunity to make new friendships that can flourish when I get back to Pittsburgh in the fall, we also had the opportunity to form some amazing bonds with the Vietnamese students. Vietnam is, I believe, the only developing country visited by the Plus 3 program, which I think made it very unique.

Vietnam is often used for countries in the global economy who are looking to implement the "China plus one" model, that is, to have capital and production invested in China, but also another foreign country, as to not put all your eggs in one basket. Vietnam is a country with a good location, cheap labor, and a very large workforce. While visiting production plants, I was interested in seeing that many jobs which would likely require protective gear as simple as goggles in the US, required nothing to protect the eyes in Vietnam. Companies though, appeared to be very invested in the well being of their employees and providing competitive wages. I think that in order to make use of a plant in another country, you need to be sensitive to their culture, and that the companies who were successful in Vietnam quickly learned this fact.

Based on my experiences in Vietnam, I have a new understanding on what aspects build upon each other to create a global economy. Though Vietnam is becoming more of an open market economy with privately owned businesses, tradition still affects much of their business interactions. I was surprised to learn that even within the country, the north and south still had very different customs. The north had stayed very conservative in business practices, where as the south had opened itself up to more outside influences. There is definitely an amount of social and political awareness a person should have before attempting to do business in Vietnam. I think that American students need to expand their experiences to include knowledge of other cultures. Either by learning about them in school, or by traveling abroad, it will be very important for Americans to not only know the customs of another country, but also to really understand how important they are to the people who live there. Going to Vietnam has resulted in my renewed interest in speaking somewhat proficiently in a language other than English. If all students spoke a foreign language and were required to classes on world cultures, I think that the American student would be much better prepared to do business abroad.

When visiting companies, we had the opportunity to see people with many different backgrounds. We saw people in the US foreign service, Vietnamese who had fled the country and then decided to go back to reestablish businesses, and expats who were in the country to start satellite locations of foreign countries, with the hope that eventually their job would be done by a Vietnamese individual. Most of the people that we met had a background in a field such as business or engineering, and then found ways to apply their knowledge to the Vietnamese market, rather than tailoring their studies around Vietnam. With a strong foundation, I felt that many were still continuing their education on a day-to-day basis, as they interacted with new people and learned new things. At Intel, we learned that they had planned to build the plant within months, but actually needed to train crews on safety, and even provide safe attire to people who showed up barefoot to work on the construction site. Not only are foreigners and foreign companies always learning to things to make their integration into the community better, I think that they are sharing some of the technical and other knowledge they have acquired with the Vietnamese as well.

In Vietnam, people's jobs are considered to be like a second family, whether you work in a family business or for a large overseas company. There was a much stronger connection between home life and work life than I feel is present in the US. Part of this is because of the history of having closed villages, and part is likely because so many people leave their families to find jobs, that when they have one the company truly is their second family. The Vietnamese seemed to be more socially accepting than Americans, but I also felt that on the whole their society is a much more conservative one than ours. I was very surprised though, that the Vietnamese knew so much about America. Many students asked us questions about or made references to American History that I didn't know the answer to, even though I've been in the American school system all my life. They seemed surprised at our attitude towards going to work though-that businesses were not storefronts connected to our homes and that our attitude about working was very disconnected from our attitudes about other aspects of our life.

In addition to learning about how business is done in Vietnam, our group also learned how to work together as a team, both socially and professionally. Though I think it is very unrealistic too keep ten young adults together for two weeks and never expect any conflicts to arise, I think that our group did a very good job of ensuring that they never got in the way of our site visits. In the engineering school, we learn how to work with different engineering students to solve problems, but I found that working with students of a different background required a different approach. It was important for us to realize that we had different backgrounds, and likely different perspectives on things, but also that there weren’t usually going to be one right answer. We quickly learned that it was okay not to understand all the information presented to us, and worked together asking and answering questions to ensure everyone felt like we they were getting something out of the visits. I really enjoyed working with a cross disciplinary team, and sharing experiences that we had all had during freshman year. Similar to the experience we had with the Vietnamese students, it was most important for us to realize all the things that made us the same before we tried to find all the differences between the two disciplines.