French Culture: To what extend do you consider your stay in Rennes as an intercultural experience?

French Culture: To what extend do you consider your stay in Rennes as an intercultural experience?

For the course of French Culture, I was asked to describe my intercultural experiences in Rennes. This is a hard question as I could easily answer it in a couple of phrases, but then I would not make myself clear and people who have never experienced a intercultural experience, wouldn’t understand what I am talking about. I could also write a book about it, but then I would start talking about all kinds of examples that, in the end, wouldn’t really matter as I would just put them in because I think they are important. Defining an intercultural experience is hard as I believe that everyone who has ever experienced it, will accord importance to different things than others.

A good quote I found recently might motivate people to have an intercultural experience. I found it on the website of the AFS Intercultural Programs ngo Office (www.afs.org):

-“Need reasons why to do an exchange year?

Here you go: I am an exchange student. How do you know what is a dream if you never accomplished one. How do you know what is an adventure if you never took part in one. How do you know what is anguish if you never said goodbye to your family and friends with your eyes full of tears. How do you know what is being desperate, if you never arrived in a place alone and could not understand a word of what everyone else was saying. How do you know what is diversity if you never lived under the same roof with people from all over the world? How do you know what is tolerance, if you never had to get used to something different even if you didn’t like it. How do you know what is autonomy, if you never had the chance to decide something by yourself? How do you know what it means to grow up, if you never stopped being a child to start a new course? How do you know what is to be helpless, if you never wanted to hug someone and had a computer screen to prevent you from doing it. How do you know what is distance, if you never, looking at a map, said “ I am so far away”. How do you know what is a language, if you never had to learn one to make friends. How do you know what is patriotism, if you never shouted “ I love my country” holding a flag in your hands. How do you know what is the true reality, if you never had the chance to see a lot of them to make one. How do you know what is an opportunity, if you never caught one. How do you know what is pride, if you never experienced it for yourself at realizing how much you have accomplished. How do you know what is to seize the day, if you never saw the time running so fast. How do you know what is a friend, if the circumstances never showed you the true ones. How do you know what is a family, if you never had one that supported you unconditionally . How do you know what are borders, if you never crossed yours , to see what there was on the other side. How do you know what is imagination, if you never thought about the moment when you would go back home. How do you know the world, if you have never been an exchange student? “-

When I read this, I was absolutely blown away as I just can’t explain my feelings about an intercultural experience abroad in a better way. I could totally find myself in all of these statements and in this paper I will try to explain why.

But to be able to make you understand why I agree so much, I have to start my story a couple of years ago. Before going on my Erasmus to Rennes, I had already participated in various exchange programs. During the fall semester of 2006 I lived for three months with a host family in Sierning, Austria. This life-changing experience, I was barely sixteen when I left my parent’s house, opened my mind and confronted me with the fact that there are bigger things than my own little town in Belgium and my friends and family there. It motivated me to, after finishing high school in 2008, go abroad for a whole school year. From August 2008 until June 2009, I lived with a wonderful host family in a precious but isolated little town in the centre of Argentina. During this year, in which I repeated my last year of high school with the local students, I learned more than just Spanish.

Just as in Austria, in Argentina I got to know the local culture and way of living of the ‘natives’ of the country I was staying in. I enjoyed to plunge into different cultures and get to know the way people think about me, as a Belgian, European, “first world” inhabitant, etc. as this not only helps me to form a view of myself but also of the way foreigners look at me and my fellow compatriots.

But it’s not only about talking and listening to local people from countries you’re staying in which is interesting, it’s also very instructive to talk with other exchange students who are living the same experience as you are at the moment you meet them. One of the best memories I have of my exchange experiences in both Austria and Argentina are the long discussions I had with other students who were experiencing more or less the same situation I was in at that moment. Their opinions about my culture, my way of living, etc., for as far as they knew anything about it, were very interesting for me to hear as it taught me not only a lot about me, but also about the way people look at my little Belgian country.

You can talk with these young stars about your countries’ culture, religion, sports, hobbies, habits, life styles, composition of families, politics, economies, history and so on, while they will tell you about theirs. Sometimes this might be very boring, but you will always learn from it and it will influence, and often enhance, your way of looking at how things are done in your own country.

All the above experiences made me want to go abroad again directly when I got back from Argentina. This is why I chose to go on an Erasmus. But this time it was different. I didn’t just leave Belgium to meet other people and cultures, although that is a big part of it of course, I also came to Rennes to study business. That’s why I think the experience I am having here in Rennes is not entirely comparable to my other intercultural experiences. Yes, I am here to meet people from all over the world and learn with and from them, and yes, I am enjoying it so much to be, once again, surrounded by so many wonderful people from totally different backgrounds, but I’m also here to prepare myself for my future life as a business man. This is why I believe that my purpose here should be to meet, chat and discuss with people, whom I have never even met before, about more than their culture, habits and ways of living. I should also talk with them about companies, businesses and economy to get to know their view about these subjects. I must emphasize though, that this doesn’t implicate that I am not having casual conversations with them. Because I am, as some of them have already become friends for life and that’s what friends do; they talk about what’s happening in their direct environment. I must admit that this kind of so-called ‘business’ conversations haven’t taken place often, as they still might be very boring for some of my companions, but nevertheless I’ve had some really interesting inputs on, for example, the economical crisis and the influence of the Arabian revolutions on the world economy.

My Erasmus here in Brittany is a unique possibility to get to know future business people and to build up a network with them that could help me as well as them when we are working. Nowadays, due to globalization and the high quantity of people that continue studying after high school, there is a non-negligible competition on pretty much every business market in the world. There are more people who study the same as me and that want to become exactly what I would like to become one day: a successful business man in a multinational intercultural company.

This is why networking is so important. I know that a lot of the people I am meeting here in Rennes are going to become successful business men and it would be foolish not to want to stay in touch with them in the future. It might sound very selfish but it’s true. The more people you know, the better. Of course this also implicates that when people I know ask me for help, I should do the best I can to help them. I would like to add to that that I am not here just to network. I am here in Rennes to have a wonderful experience together with marvelous people that I feel so lucky of having met. 

To come back on the business part of intercultural experiences, I think it is very interesting to have courses such as Project and Strategic Management because in this way one gets to know how people from other cultures work and what their view is on the way a company should work. It is obvious that people from Russia will approach a project in a different way than people from Spain. This could lead to good as well as bad results and that is why a project manager, for instance, should have some intercultural experience to be able to lead the whole project in a professional way. I already experienced these cultural differences in some group works I took part in during my stay at ESC Rennes and I must say that I’ve had some surprisingly successful experiences with Chinese, Korean, Spanish, Finnish, Danish, Polish and Belgian students.

But I don’t want to wonder off topic. I think it’s clear by now that I am convinced that this experience in Rennes is definitely an intercultural experience. I already said that the networking and studying is a reason for me to be on Erasmus, as I am getting to the age that I shouldn’t just be thinking about where to get drunk this weekend, but I will neither deny that the partying with people from all over the world isn’t a great part of being on Erasmus in Rennes.

I think that, because my past intercultural experiences were a longer time ago, I can better place those experiences in space and time, while the Erasmus I am living now here in Rennes is still ongoing. This is probably the reason for why I am not able to describe my thoughts and feelings about it in the way I would like to. Not yet anyway, but I am convinced that after I get back to Belgium in December I will be able to accord the correct importance to all my encounters and experiences I had here in Rennes and I will be happy to rewrite an essay about my Erasmus when it’s completely over.

I would like to finish this essay by using my own motto: “Experiences are the key to success” because I strongly believe that the more experience a person gains in his life, the more goals he will be able to achieve. To conclude, I am more than sure that my Erasmus in Rennes is an intercultural experience which I am enjoying to the fullest by meeting and interacting with extraordinary fellow international students who come from places I’ve never even heard off. 

Note: this course was teached by R. L. dit Arsène and this essay was written by myself, all copyrights reserved. This is only partly my opinion, as I had to slightly adapt it in order to comply to what I think he likes.. :)