As The Cure says, it’s Friday, I’m in love… with Ireland. The weather has proved itself to be unreliable but surprisingly good so far. So, it’s been a cool and sunny day.

We were visited by Docusign today! The company that made so many things possible and easier to do especially during the pandemic. Their lecture was certainly an interesting one. The bread and butter of the company is optimizing electronic signatures, which means they must have a global reach. This increases the clientele which has made Docusign successful but also presents a lot of challenges. Our lecturer focused on how the cultural differences between countries play a role in business management. There was brutal honesty about the specific ways other countries have faced problems with this Ireland based company in the sense that language barriers and differing methodology hinders the efficiency of the company when cultures mix. The time differences, we were told, didn’t help either.

In my opinion, compared to our visit with Google, I found Docusign’s mindset a little negative. Google really celebrated the differences between employees to the point of creating communal spaces for employee taught lessons on anything they want to share with their peers, having national café days, and collaborative relaxation spaces to bring people together for a common goal as a group! Although this is easily possible due to being in the same office, unlike Docusign’s international business processes, it doesn’t mean that it should be overlooked as an achievement by Google. Meanwhile, it seems like Docusign focuses on the inevitable downsides of international business. My dad always says: “Control only what you can,” and that’s what Docusign is doing, whether they realize it or not. The rest should just be work.

Our first lecturer today, however, had some fascinating cooking recipes for us. He taught us about the European–specifically Irish way–of education. Instead of strict American rubrics and simple memorization he told us teachers here “give you a piece of paper, two hours, and… go.” At that, he suddenly asked me, in front of the whole group, if I were going to be okay with that as a student. My smile was difficult to hide; I said: “I’m an English major, so yeah. That sounds pretty good to me!” I also didn’t tell him that that’s the way Brazilian education is too. It was funny because my answer threw him off, but also due to the way he twisted that into a lesson. My outside of the box thinking, he concluded, would fare better in Ireland, where you must think for yourself, on your feet, and know how to handle ambiguous situations (which, by the way, if anyone was questioning it out there, are most if not all situations whether we like it or not). His education, he said, was based in this way before he moved to America and that’s what set him up to go above and beyond their expectations. Obviously, I see a lot of similarities in my own educational journey.

Tomorrow is looking great. Off to the cliffs! See you then.