Insights from a curious mind

Life is a peculiar dance sometimes, you go back and forth without sometimes knowing where you are heading. For a lot of people, this is how college and student-life can feel. A lot of people study worrying about what type of job you can be able to get and how the job market is becoming increasingly difficult to enter. I have come to realize that the things you cannot control, you should not worry about. I am a firm believer that those who obtain a high degree of curiousness will succeed in life.

I moved across the world to see what life was like here in the states. I had seen many movies and had an idea, but I was far from correct. I travelled to learn the stories of people, to learn about the realness in change and what makes people differ around the world. As a sociology nerd, I love to see how the mechanisms of a culture are different from my own and how I can learn more about myself through seeing the culture of others. An example is of Norwegians and Americans. At first, Norwegians are not as talkative generally when taking public transport, they tend to not engage and talk much. Americans on the other hand, are quite the opposite. The other day when buying groceries, one lady asked me if I was from here and wanted to know more about me. After discussing this for some minutes she told me it was so interesting to see people from other cultures and with other perspectives.

Often times, instead of approaching traveling and other cultures through curiousness, we approach it through our own self-taught lens. If we truly take on the lens of curiousness, we learn to know that we are not that different, we are just raised in a different culture. When curiousness is the lens in which you are approaching people, you come across as more genuine and real and people sense this. Walt Disney said this upon being curious "we keep moving forward, opening new doors, and doing new things, because we`re curious and curiosity keeps leading us down new paths”. I want to travel the world and see how the world functions because I am curious to see how it differs from my own experiences. At school, I am interning in International admissions and it is a truly great experience. I am learning about new students and engaging with them when applying and when helped them get situated at school. I previously wrote about what makes up an international student and this comes from curiousness. It is this notion that we need to see what is going on around the world that makes the world come forward.

To relate it to business and my studies, I am studying business because I think it is a great ticket to international exposure of culture and because I am curious to see more of the world. If you read my college tips, you can see a lot of my passion for engagement on campus and intercultural exchanges. With work, I started something called Global Student Club where we meet every Tuesday to further our understanding of culture and to have both an academic and social arena for global togetherness. I was curious to learn about other international students and help new students succeed here at PLU. 

To conclude, my curiousness has led me to study in the states, to be an intern here in admissions and to write this piece and I am certain that like Walt Disney, it will open more doors and lead me down new paths.

Harald