Exploring the woods around Minoh Falls in northern Osaka
Author: Breck Husong | Major: Data Science | Semester: Summer 2023
Hello! My name is Breck Husong, and I’m majoring in Data Science, an interdisciplinary program through the College of Engineering, Sam M. Walton College of Business, and Fulbright College of Arts and Sciences. In the summer of 2023, I worked an internship abroad in Osaka, Japan for the company カモンアップ (Come on UP). This company is a sharehouse company, leasing housing to people from many cultures. In just the sharehouse I lived in by itself, we had residents from Japan, Brazil, Russia, the United States, and the Netherlands! In Osaka, I got to live in one of the most highly populated cities in the world while working my internship, a very new and exciting experience for someone like me who has lived in Arkansas for most of my life. This internship was my first internship, and I would have had it no other way.
At the beginning of my internship, I took on the typical intern position: helping with generic tasks like daily Instagram posting, studying various documents and policies of the company, attending meetings, and learning from what my coworkers do. However, as the internship drew on, I was given more critical tasks to complete. One of these tasks was administrative and technical support for our English Camp, a 5-6 week long summer camp that brings around 150 students from top colleges around the world to teach English to Japanese highschoolers all around Japan. These student coaches teach at a different high school each week and usually move to a different accommodation each week as well. My administrative and technical support consisted of creating various google spreadsheets that hold the data regarding these coaches and their accommodations. We had the format for storing information from previous years, but it wasn’t satisfactory, so I was assigned with improving its efficiency. The main problem with the previous version was that the format of the spreadsheet increased the chances of misinputting information, as the same information had to be copied into multiple locations. I solved this by making a formula that auto populates information from one place to everywhere else, so information only had to be inputted in one section, decreasing the chances of copying wrong or mistyping.
In the field of Data Science, communication is very important. I have to be able to effectively communicate my findings to my supervisors so that they can efficiently act on the information I give them. Through this internship, I have learned very much about communication, as I’ve had to adapt to working in an environment where few people know English fluently, if at all. I realized that I have to communicate in different ways to different audiences. Before, I communicated in a way true to my character, but in a way that might not properly communicate what I mean to others that don’t know very well. Now, I make more of an effort to understand how others will interpret what I say in order to communicate how I feel in a way that they will understand better.
As for me, I definitely plan on returning to Japan for another study abroad opportunity. Now that I have a grasp on the work experience side of Japan, I want to experience normal classes in Japan as well.