Similar to the legendary Bilbo Baggins of the Shire in Middle Earth, I embarked on the greatest journey of my life. This was my very first time being so far away from home as well as flying. Even though this was the opportunity of a lifetime, I still had doubts and a part of me wanted to stay home. Nevertheless, I boarded the plane in Chicago on August 11th, 2016 and departed to Dublin, Ireland for my connecting flight to Amsterdam. From there, I took the trains from Schiphol Airport in Amsterdam over to Osnabrück, Germany.

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Prior to the Winter Semester at Hochschule Osnabrück, I participated in an intensive summer German course (90 hours of lessons).  There were approximately 150 international students from all over the world, we were placed into 8 different groups based on our understanding of the language. I was placed into the 7th group which was the second-most advanced level. Along with the language lessons, students of Hochschule Osnabrück volunteered as German Tutors. They planned activities for us to interact and get to know the other international students. In addition, we had days trips to Münster, Bremen, and Amsterdam. At the end of the course, we even had a four day trip to Potsdam and Berlin. During the Winter Semester, I continued to develop my language skills with a Business German course. The other courses I took were European Integration and Cultural Management to fulfill my International Management emphasis as well as Business Law and Human Resource Management. 

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Due to the partnership between the College of Business at the University of Wisconsin Oshkosh and Hochschule Osnabrück, this allowed me to complete an internship while I was in Germany. For my internship, I reached out to Warwick GmbH & Co Music Equipment KG, an electric guitar and bass guitar manufacturer located in Markneukirchen, Germany. My primary role was managing the content for their webshop which included: uploading pictures, descriptions, features, and demo video videos of products.

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Click here to learn more about Warwick 

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