PARIS

              Right before leaving the US, there were two significant terrorist attacks in London and Paris.  While we visited London, we walked past Borough Market to try and make sense of what happened less than a week of our arrival.  In Paris, there was an attack at Notre Dame, a destination we ended up visiting a week after as well.  Even though I know bad things can happen anywhere it was an uneasy feeling having two of the five locations have an attack less than a week before our arrival.  Professor Gordon Stables talked during one of our pre-departure meetings in Los Angeles about how poised we all were in handling the news and being rational yet aware of what was happening.  Right after visiting the Louvre during one of our first days in Paris, we rented bikes and planned on biking to the Eiffel Tower for a picnic.  However, our plan was quickly changed after professor Vince Gonzales informed us that there were numerous military officers and the area didn’t seem safe at that time.  Even though it is still unclear how dangerous that particular situation was, it really put it into perspective how you could potentially be in the wrong place at the wrong time.  As someone who reads the news about these horrific acts, it sometimes feels like it would never happen to me.  To be in a place where there has a high potential of having an unsafe situation really allowed me to understand the severity of these events. 

            On the topic of company meetings, we met with Publicis Communications, Jim Bittermann from CNN, OECD, The International New York Times, Disneyland Paris, and Euler Hermes.  Given the wide variety of companies, it was so great to hear from all of them as they had so much to offer.  For starters, I really appreciated what Anthony Gooch had to say at OECD.  He talked about Brexit and how important it is to effectively communicate to your target audience and make sure there is a specific reason why they are your target audience.  An effective way to communicate is to provide accurate information that also appeals to people’s emotions.  Unfortunately, people aren’t always drawn to research tables with black and white Times New Roman.  It is important to appeal to both emotion and rational thought by featuring factual information in fast, fun, to-the-point ways like short videos sharable through social media.  It can sometimes seem like the obvious answer to combine facts and emotion but it is not always implemented correctly for it to be as effective as possible.  I also appreciated the transparency in our discussion and being able to see that effective communication is something in high demand, thankfully creating positions for Annenberg students to excel at.

            The other meeting that really stuck out to be was with Joan Wasylik at Euler Hermes.  This meeting was extremely special because she had previously been on the ICS program and we were looking at someone who achieved success through her professional journey.  We were able to see where we would hopefully be in the future and I left the meeting knowing not necessarily what I wanted to do later as a job but who I wanted to be at my job.  I wrote down qualities Joan displayed that included being unapologetically confident, self-assured, funny, relatable, powerful, fearless, human, etc.  She is so impressive.  In that room I felt like she had fully understood how valuable her skills were including those she knows she can learn in the future.  I definitely want to embody those ideals and be able to take risks knowing that my skill set will follow me wherever I go.  These qualities are what many people would list as things they want to be but to see an idea of who I could be left me with a lot of determination.