Business Acumen Dimension

Within the Business Acumen dimension, one aspect of the model that affected my life the most was the lack of depth of field about the United States. For example, coming to the United States the first time from Venezuela when I was eighteen years old was an unforeseen experience. I felt like I was entering into a new world within the same world. I did not speak English and that in itself was the most challenging task that I have ever faced. Certainly, I knew nothing about the culture or cultures surrounding me while I was living my first years in the U.S. I traveled with misconceptions about Americans and the whole fogged window of the culture.

My Relationship Management

Within the Relationship Management dimension, there were some experiences that related to my Change Agentry ability. For example, in Venezuela, I was pretty free thinking and I thought of myself as being open-minded, but after I came to the U.S., I realized I wasn’t as open minded as I had thought. I was not aware of the degree that I would change my perceptions in this new country. The life experiences and unconscious adjustment process I went through helped me change the perceptions of the world and adapt easily to a new society accepting others as they are.

Personal Effectiveness Dimension - Improvisations

There were many times in which Improvisation, a sub dimension from the Personal Effectiveness Dimension had taken place in my life. When I came to the United States by myself I was not aware of the culture shock I was about to experience. I did not have friends, know anyone, nor did I have people to socialize with and that killed me inside. I have always been a very sociable person with lots of friends and family, where expressing love and feelings was common practice. Now that I was here I could not show my love or say I love you to anyone, because to say those things to people that I just met was not the culture, so I had to Improvise whenever I made those mistakes. For example, after kissing someone on the chick because I would forget I was not suppose to do that, I would immediately let them know that I was sorry and that it was an automatic reaction because that was the way we greeted in my country. Through improvisation I have changed and learned to express my feelings in different ways. For example, I learned to greet people without kissing them on the chick, and show I care without being too affectionate.

Personal Effectiveness Dimension - Curiosity and Learning

Another sub dimension I had was that of Curiosity and Learning. This was a process that allowed me to gain all the knowledge I now posses in regards with my English speaking abilities and learning about other cultures. For example, even though it was quite frustrating not to be able to communicate with anyone, I was always curious about everything that occurred around me and tried to interpret what was going on. My actions helped me learn and improve my intuitiveness. I have always known that the only way to learn English for me was to surround myself by people who spoke it fluently, so I would ask questions whenever things didn’t make sense. For example, when people used slangs like “IT’S BAD” meaning bad as in good. If I would have shut my mouth and just misinterpret people’s slang usage I would have never been able to clearly understand a conversation.

Personal Effectiveness Dimension - Maturity

Maturity is a sub dimension that helped me through my multicultural process in the United States. For example, since the time I left Venezuela I began to live life by myself, and did everything on my own. I learned how to be self-sufficient and that allowed me to mature faster than if I had not come here. I would get so lonely at night and miss my family and friends. I was missing my social life from Venezuela, but at the same time I was enchanted by my experience. Everyday I would learn something new about the language, the culture, the people, and about myself.
I had never had time to see myself as I did when I came to the U.S. Those times of solitude helped me become strong and learn about what I wanted in life. I also learned many of the things I was capable of doing. For example, I was able to be far away from my whole family surrounded by new people and survive just fine.

How exploration drove me into Cross-Cultural Communication?

My everyday life for the first three months was both frustrating and exiting. Frustrating, because I did not know how to express my thoughts in the beginning, or did not know how to behave in certain occasions, and I could not speak the language. And exiting because, my life was filled with new moments every day. Although I lived the same routine for several months, it consisted of repetitive exploration.
I would walk to the college bus station for 15 minutes, catch the bus, say only hello to the bus driver and smile at people, if people would say to me: “Hello, how are you doing?” I would not know what to answer because the only greeting I knew in English was “Hello how are you?” When the bus would get to school, I would say bye to the driver, and then walk to my classroom. Everyone seemed so different than the people of my country. Everyone, dressed, looked and acted so different. Also everybody behaved so quietly in comparison to the college life in my country. I would go into my classroom and there I was surrounded by other people who were also foreigners in the country trying to learn English, just like me. This is also where I learned about other cultures whether it was the way they dressed, facial features or the different perspectives that they had due to their own cultural beliefs, it was a melting pot of culture in one small classroom. I believe this is where Cross-Cultural Communication came into play within my learning in the U.S.
During class we all spoke with different accents and practiced our lectures. When the school day was over, I would catch the bus again, and walk my fifteen minutes home. I would then, sit for hours in front of the TV and watch videos that taught English, when I would get tired of them, I would just watch regular channels and try to catch what they were saying, which was not too much at the time. Then, I would do my homework, eat and go to bed. This was the picture of my everyday life for a few months.

Staying Strong through Language Barriers

This is not part of the Brake Model itself but it helped me get many of the characteristics from the dimentions.
My only friend at that time watching out for me was God, he became my daily companion, and my faith in God allowed me to stay strong in the toughest moments. Well, after three months I started to think and said to myself, “If I am so afraid of talking to people I will never have friends” so I stopped being self-conscious about making a mistake or speaking wrong English. I knew if I was to build relationships with Americans that I would have to speak English and that was what I was going to do. I also knew that people would respect me for trying to learn English rather than to try and make them understand me. I needed to improve my English pronunciation and unless I tried I would never have being able to meet the people that I have established relationships to this day. So, I started to open up and try to engage in conversations and a whole new world was upon me.
I loved learning English, and I understood more than people thought. However, I would always carry a dictionary in Spanish-English and used it for many months. I had a desperate need for socializing and that pushed me forward to speak up. I tried to establish conversations and it was frustrating because I would mispronounce the words and people would not understand unless I would show them the word from the dictionary. After I would show them the word then they would reply and pronounce the word the right way, so I would always pay attention and repeated the word after them. I was always so curious and looking forward to learning something new every day. I asked people to please correct me without hesitation because that is what was going to help me improve my English. Little by little I learned to pronounce more and more words until the point I was able to converse in English with others.

Entrepreneurial Spirit

I have always wanted to interact with others and form a community, so foreign students would not feel so lonely. My Entrepreneurial Spirit was prevalent by Founding and being president of this club which took a lot of work and research and helped me build up my leadership and organizational skills. I conducted meetings, organized events and established new relationships among members. We all created a fun and social environment for all members of the club. I gained a great amount of knowledge about people’s personalities, their moral values and perspectives, which all aided me in broadening my cross-cultural expertise.
Finally, I became more inspired to travel and to learn about new countries and their cultures: A Global Explorer. Due to the fact that I had gained the confidence to believe in myself and acknowledge that I could go anywhere in the world and live new experiences and endure the obstacles of being in a new country without being afraid. Therefore, this confidence has enabled me to travel to other countries and gain more global reference.

Helping others through Cross-Cultural Communication

While learning English and improving my skills I helped other foreign students with their English assignments, we all wrote journals for our class and we would read them out loud and learn from each other. It was fascinating to see so many people with different cultures in one room, following the same objective, learn English and survive in a foreign land. I felt so alive, meeting and knowing I was having this opportunity to see people from all over the world. There were people from Laos, Middle East, Africa, China, Japan, Mexico, Russia, Ukraine, and others. Cross-cultural Communication is exactly what was happening as I attended classes with these students and the knowledge that I learned of their cultures is irreplaceable. I was living everyday to the fullest obtaining cultural background knowledge from all of them. I learned that there were students coming from countries that were so far away, yet they had some of the same beliefs that I had.

Community Building & Stakeholder Orientated

To expand on my multi-cultural background there were always other activities that I got involved in that allowed me to widen my knowledge about other cultures and build up my personality and I believe to be part of Community Building. As a means to help and meet other international students on campus I also became Stakeholder Orientated and founded the International Students Club at Butte College. The main objective of this club was to help foreign students learn more about the American culture and share their experiences with others. This would help foreign students have a smoother transition into the American culture and have some guidance through the college’s available resources they might not have being aware of.

Thinking Agility - Another Subdimention of Personal Effectiveness

As the years went by and we moved on, the less and less international students I would see because I was in regular courses surrounded by mainly Americans and just a few foreigners. The more I interacted with Americans, the more I would learn about our cultural differences. There were times were I could not understand why people did certain things so differently, or how others did not understand me. As time went by and the months slowly passed, I got more used to the ways things were here. And on the least expected day, I found myself dreaming in English, and there it was the point where everything I said didn’t need to be translated anymore. It was automatic, I was able at this point to think and speak in English.
Eleven months after my stay in the U.S. I went back to my home country and it was there when I found out all about the differences I had experience in the US. I realized I had lived a different life and grew up and mature faster than many of my friends who stayed in Venezuela. I used to compare everything all the time, and people hated it. My Spanish didn’t sound perfect anymore and I spoke backwards and that was because I thought in English. People thought I was faking it, but they had no idea that this really happened to me. Others would see me as a very cold woman, just because I wouldn’t automatically kiss everyone on the cheek, which was traditional in Venezuela. Many didn’t see me as the same sweet girl that had left a year earlier.
I realized then, how much I changed and the transformation that had occurred in the past year, and I was o.k. with that. After I came back to the U.S. a month later, I was not only able to interact with Americans, but also able to understand their culture and many others. I understood myself better and I learned that comparing two countries out load or referencing too much of one country to people from the other could be offensive. At this point I believe that being able to use Thinking Agility made a large impact on my personality traits. I reflected on many of my mistakes and learned that there is not right or wrong between cultures, just differences.
The before mentioned experience is the root of my cross-cultural background as well as part of my global experience. I had to adjust to new ways of thinking, learn a new language and transform myself into a person that was able to coexist in a new country. I learned to look at circumstances from many different perspectives and became open-minded and accepted different ways of thinking.