Let's discover Croatia
My winter semester courses
I went to Pula to study in a Bachelor of Tourism and Economics , in English. Most of the teachers were Croatians and had quite a strong accent so it could be sometimes tricky to understand them at first, but they took time to explain properly so everybody could understand. I will give you the details of every course I attend so you can have a first opinion.
I was given the choice of courses I wanted to take for each semester, so I chose the following six courses for the winter semester :
- INTERCULTURAL COMMUNICATION AND TRAVEL
- SALES MANAGEMENT
- BUSINESS ENGLISH LANGUAGE
- CORPORATE SOCIAL RESPONSIBILITY AND SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT
- MACROECONOMIC MANAGEMENT
- QUALITY MANAGEMENT
The classes I chose are centered around international business and management. I chose these courses because they fit most my professional project and allow me to develop a larger set of skills!
INTERCULTURAL COMMUNICATION AND TRAVEL
This course was quite easy . Actually, even if it was quite simple I learned a lot in this course even though I had good knowledge in this field, it was very complete. Very few students took this course which made this course very pleasant and more understandable because the professor could take more time to explain to us each thing that we did not understand.
I loved this course because I was able to learn the interpretation of body language from several cultures of the world. For example, the sign "thumbs up" is used in many cultures to mean "OK", in France it can mean number 1. But it has a very crude sexual connotation in Islamic countries.
The final exam went very well, we had to answer 10 questions about the Power Point that the professor had used for his course.
BUSINESS ENGLISH LANGUAGE
This course was very enriching from a cultural point of view and to acquire better skills in English. In group work we had to present the sponsorship of a company, then we had to present our country, regions or city of origin by evoking for example its gastronomy, its cultural dances, its spoken language, or its history. So we were able to discover each other's culture while practicing our English. The final exam took place in two parts: a written vocabulary test, and an oral test.
SALES MANAGEMENT
I was already taking this course when I was at the IUT, that's why I wanted to continue this year. We had around two hours of sales management lessons per week. Classes were given by a former sales manager. The teacher gave us a presentation to present in class. I chose the subject of the negotiation. The presentation took place at the end of the semester and went very well. I found the exam quite hard because it required a lot of knowledge. The course content was interesting but very technical.
CORPORATE SOCIAL RESPONSIBILITY AND SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT
This course is the course I enjoyed the most. Our teacher was really passionate, pedagogical and methodological. She often set up class debates, which was very interesting because we were able to share our points of view on different subjects around business ethics. Likewise, she made us work in groups on case studies. I already used to work in a group, so it was not very difficult. The final exam was an oral in our teacher's office. The exam went very well. We had our grade the same day, and at the end of our exam, our teacher took stock of the progress of our semester to make sure that everything went well and that we have well integrate the concepts that we have seen during this semester. Now that I have attended this course, I am seriously considering doing a Masters in the field of CSR.
MACROECONOMIC MANAGEMENT
The Macroeconomics management course was a very interesting course. The professor was American, so his English was very understandable. First he started by focusing on the basics of economics (the history of the economy, the most important concepts, ...), then we started the real macroeconomics course. Unfortunately we had very few lessons because of the teachers' strikes in Croatia. However we had to make a 20-page written work on the current economic situation of our country of origin (in my case that of France), and give a solution to economic and social problems while ensuring sustainable development. This course gave me a current and different vision of the world, and made me aware of the current issues facing each country.
QUALITY MANAGEMENT
This course was really the hardest course I could choose. Our teacher was very demanding and expected a lot from us. We had a group work consisting in defining the quality policy of an existing company, its missions, its vision, its process, and some long term goals. main. The final exam consisted of a group oral exam. Our teacher had given us lots of documents to read to review and be ready for the exam. Unfortunately many students did not pass the exam, and therefore had to re-take the exam. For my part I passed the exam, we were only four students out of twenty to have passed, but the fact remains that I really found it complicated. As quality is very important in corporate purchasing management, I have been able to integrate many concepts that will be useful to me in the pursuit of my studies.