Get Smart

“Education is not the filling of a pail but the lighting of a fire.” ~William Butler Yeats

Feb 27, 2013

When I woke up this morning, I still felt congested and my head was throbbing. I drank a ton of water before going to class hoping that might clear it up. I wanted to save the Tylenol and Advil that I had some if I needed them later in the trip (I have no idea how to say Acetaminophen in Czech if I had to buy more.)

I went to my early morning class which is on International Management. “Have I told you about three rules in my class?” he asked. Everyone stared at him blankly. We were either all tired and groggy, or he hadn’t mentioned it.

“You can interrupt me as the professor for three things,” he said. “The first is if you do not understand something. I know my accent and many of the accents in here might be hard to understand so just ask if you don’t understand.

“The second is if you know something I do not know. Even though I teach international classes and travel, you know more about your country than I know, so feel free to share it.

“Third, you can always interrupt if you think of a good joke.”

It is always funny to hear the professors talk about America. In many ways, they don’t consider America to be the world giant that we think of ourselves as. In other ways, they seem to see us as the biggest player (along with China, India, and the emerging Brazil.)

Today there was a lot of positive coverage of America. As a few examples:

• Of the 500 largest corporations in the world, over half of them are owned out of the US.
• The value of Apple is equal to a third of the entire GDP of the EU.
• There is great faith in the dollar, with almost two thirds of the world’s cash reserves being held in American currency.

The negative critique came in America’s relationship with Mexico. While my professor gives credit to the US and NAFTA for helping Mexico grow quite a bit, he is under the impression that we have built a wall across the southern border of America. He says, “This is not very nice way to deal with neighbors.”

I didn’t interrupt him to correct this fact. Neither did the other seven Americans in the class.

We also had to choose groups to do a research project on the WTO. Karin and I decided to work together, and a Czech girl named Ellie asked to join our group. We divided out roles for the project, and agreed on a few deadlines to check in with each other on the progress. The project is due next Tuesday so it doesn’t give us a ton of time, but the guidelines are also pretty open ended.

“Whichever project is the best gets the 10 points,” the professor said. “That is the A. The other ones will be judged off of that one.”

“Easy,” I said. “All we have to do is be better than everyone else.” Maybe that’s the American coming out in me.

After class, I went back to the dorms to try sleeping off the headache again. This time, when I woke up, I actually did feel a lot better. I was still a little congested, but the tension in my head seemed to be gone.  Unfortunately, I overslept and had to race out to the tram to get to class.

I arrived a few minutes late, but Professor Kral hadn’t started lecturing yet. When he did, it was another really interesting class. He finished his presentation from last week on possible barriers to international marketing. Using humor and sex as examples he pointed out how difference in culture can make ad campaigns more or less effective. Humor tends to be universally accepted (as long as the subject is appropriate to joke about within the culture) while sex tends to be a bit more sacred and harder to use across borders.

One example he showed was this video of a German ad campaign that wound up being successful in many countries:

 

Something I found interesting was the discussion of television advertising. In the EU there are legal limits on TV advertising. With England being the most restrictive, each country has a set limit of the number of ads that can be shown during a TV program. The generally accepted baseline is that only 15% of a scheduled portion of a TV program can be used for advertising (example: for each hour of television, only 9 minutes can be used for advertising…in England, its only 4 minutes.) The joke that several European students have made is that "football" (Soccer) never caught on in the US because the game is too fast for commercial breaks.

After class, I went to meet with Thibaut. We decided to go get dinner back by the dorms.

“I read your blog,” he said again. “I saw some of the things you said about America.”

I reiterated to him some of the pros and cons I saw in the American lifestyle after being away. He also asked me about my family and I asked about his.

“And what have you seen in Prague,” he asked. I told him the various sites, museums, and churches I had seen.

“And you?” I asked. He had a similar list, although he was clearly better versed at the history of the city than I was.

We went back and forth quite a bit before getting into the subject of travel.When all was said and done, we both had lists of places to see but we decided on Vienna, Krakow, and Budapest. Looking at the calendar, we picked a date to go to Krakow and are now looking for transport to get there. His roommates, who come from around the world, are also interested in traveling with us. I had found some folks to travel with!

After dinner, we went back to the dorms. I still felt a little congested and my headache was returning, so I decided to turn into be a little early to try and beat the cold. I found an American radio station online and listened for a bit while I blogged.

Looks like tomorrows adventure will include grocery shopping, homework, and hopefully a cathedral tour!