'Combining rationale and intuition for effect is what I learnt' says Ayushi Tripathi .

'Combining rationale and intuition for effect is what I learnt' says Ayushi Tripathi .

Ayushi Tripathi at Audencia Business School

The winter program at the Audencia Business School of Management is a student exchange program, where students are required to undergo a 20 days training programme that includes classroom learning, activities, field trips and institutional visits.

The trip to Europe started on 28^th December 2019 from Bangalore airport. We landed in Munich on 29^th December 2019. We started our journey by visiting not only the Prague castle at -7degrees but all the cathedrals and educational visit to the BMW office. We also visited the factory of Heineken where we all were offered free beers which were freshly made. We celebrated the new year in Budapest where we all enjoyed the fireworks and explored the city and their traditional food. We reached Paris on 5^th January 2020. Our course in Paris started on 6^th January. The topic we studied and discussed about was “DESIGN THINKING”. The day started with our introduction to the faculty and the afternoon session was taken by the professor Samual who gave us insights on how to empathize with a person’s situation and think of possible ways how we can find ways of solving their problems. He also told us how they do activites to analyse the situation which are faced by people. The sessions from 7^th January onwards was taken by the professor Martin and Marius. The next two sessions we were asked to think of different ways to solve problem which was faced in Europe. The 4^th session we had to prototype our ideas and form a model related to it. The last session of our classes in Paris was our pitching session. In which our team has to prepare a presentation on the prototype we had created and pitch in the judges for our prototype.

On 11^th of January we started the last part of our journey which was conducted in Brussels, which mainly dealt giving us knowledge about the regulatory powers in Europe and the economy of Europe. The first day in Brussels was our visit to the museum of Europe which was previously the most important monument for the European Union, which is now converted in a 3 floor museum which had a very interesting structure at the centre which when enters each monuments in each floor into a quote related to that event. The second day in Brussels started with a very interesting activity. We had a “role play” in the visitors parlamentarium. In that we have been divided in 4 groups which represented the four parties of the European Union and had to come to a decision which policy we will implement and which we will not. The 2^nd session of the day we got the opportunity to visit the parliament of Europe, which is one of three parliaments where the European union meetings are conducted. The next day session included our visit to the national bank of Belgium. The visit to the national bank gave us information about the advancement of the currency of Europe. The visit not only gave us information not only about the currency but also the main events happening all round the countries.

My 1^st learning was adjusting and accepting different cultures i.e. my cross cultural learning. My 2^nd  learning was “team work”, I actually realised the value of team work in this trip to Audencia. Where in a foreign land my team was my support system. Where we all were unaware about the land, people & most importantly language.

From the take-off till the arrival back in India, this trip taught me & made me experience a completely different world. Apart from economics this trip taught me everything I never thought of learning. From teamwork, standing by each other, leadership, perseverance, time management, this trip was a summation of all lessons in one chapter.