Passports, Not Textbooks

by Emily Enquist

Oh, you do not read your textbook? 

Perfect. No textbook is needed—not when you are studying abroad anyway. I do not mean to say that your classes are unimportant abroad; however, there is much to learn outside of a book. The experience studying abroad gives you spans way beyond the classroom—something I learned during my semester abroad in Buenos Aires. 

You may have heard of Argentina, as they have been in the news at times: a World Cup win and a not-so-incredible economic default issue. As an international business major, living these experiences instead of just reading about them has given me a much deeper understanding than I could have had by staying at Drake. Living abroad has shed an incredible amount of light on the classes international business (IB) majors are required to take, and I want to highlight some examples to show you how.

International Marketing
What I came to realize in a country like Argentina—where the people worship the sport of soccer and the men who play it—is that an astounding amount of advertising revolves around the sport. Take that knowledge and put it in the context of the World Cup. What do you get? Lionel Messi's face. Everywhere. Messi is one of the best soccer players in the world and is the essence of Argentine soccer. For that, he is everyone's hero. Companies, including Lays, Adidas, and even random cleaning supply companies, use Messi to sell their products, and in Argentina, it works.

International Finance
I had first-hand experience with international finance and the fluctuation of exchange rates. The Argentine peso is so unstable that when I was chatting with a friend before class, we discussed exchange rates before we discussed the weather. In Argentina, both can change drastically from day to day. And I am not talking about the official government exchange rate, which stayed around 8 pesos for every 1 dollar while I was there. I am talking about the Blue rate, a rate given for black market exchanges between pesos and dollars. Although this is technically illegal (note the use of the term black market), it is practiced by anyone and everyone with access to dollars and euros. From the time I arrived, the blue rate fluctuated from 10 pesos for every dollar to a high of 15 pesos for every dollar. So the difference between using the official rate and the blue rate on, say, a steak and a glass of wine (I am in Argentina, after all), which costs about 130 pesos, would be $16.25 with the official rate, and $8.66 with the blue rate. Now, try to tell me you would not use it, too.

Although the exchange rate works in favor of international students like myself, it was hard to be excited about getting a great rate when it meant the value of my host parents and friends' pesos deteriorated every day. Restaurants, cafes, and stores once a part of my daily life have closed. Inflation has made buying beef and wine for some families impossible—items regarded as staples of Argentine culture. All the while, the upper class gets richer, and the middle and lower classes struggle more every day. When talking about international finance, we do not often discuss the social impact a fluctuating exchange rate has on a country’s people. I am grateful to have had the opportunity to see its effects up close.

These are just two areas in which being abroad helped me to understand why and how we study subjects from an international perspective and why it is so important that international experiences be included in the curriculum. As IB students, we can not be expected to understand how marketing, economics, and finance work in the world if we have not experienced them ourselves. For those of you who have already had your experience abroad, I hope you agree with me and are fondly thinking of your time abroad. For those of you who have yet to go, know that I am insanely jealous that you have your entire experience ahead of you, and I hope you are excited about the adventures that await you.

As my good friend Mark Twain once said: “Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness, and many of our people need it sorely on these accounts. Broad, wholesome, charitable views of men and things cannot be acquired by vegetating in one little corner of the earth all one's lifetime.”