Crossing the Cultural Borders

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