Hello! My name is Ben Fleisher, and I am a freshman in the College of Business Administration. I am currently a finance major and am thinking of adding marketing to double major. I don’t know what I want to do after college yet, but I am interested in sports business and am active in Sports Business Association here at Pitt. I am from Herndon, Virginia, which is about 30 minutes outside of Washington, D.C. I have been lucky enough to travel to ten countries in four different continents and have developed a passion for traveling, so I’m very excited to study abroad in Vietnam.

I chose the Plus3 program because of my love for travel, as I liked the idea of trying out studying abroad in a two week period to see if I enjoyed the experience as much as I thought I would to confirm that I want to study abroad for a whole semester. I have already been to Germany, Italy, and, China, so I narrowed my first choice down to Vietnam and Costa Rica. Vietnam caught my eye in particular because of the academic focus of the trip, which is development and globalization. The applicability of what the nation of Vietnam is going through to the business world I am soon going to be a part of attracted my interest.

I’ve never traveled outside of the country without my family and been as independent abroad as I will have to be in Vietnam. I believe my communication and teamwork skills will be tested consistently, and my goal is that they will be improved by the time we board the plane back to the United States. The site visits will expose me to the international side of business that I haven’t went into depth in with my classes yet.

I look forward to getting close to my fellow Plus3 Vietnam students and the Vietnamese students we meet, as well. As crazy as it seems to me, in only two short weeks, we’ll be on the way to Vietnam, and I can’t wait!