Ethical Issues in My Profession:
I learned the most about Vietnamese industry on our company visit to the Vietnam Singapore Industrial Park, and more specifically from our experience with II-VI. Our II-VI company visit was unique because not only did we get to hear about the company and the products it creates, but we got to visit the factory in which the products were created and see the production process and the working environment of factory workers in Vietnam. The working conditions we witnessed seemed very similar to what I would imagine a factory environment in the United States would be like. Each worker had a specific task and the final products were created in an assembly line type fashion. Although the working conditions and the style of working seemed similar to that of a US factory, the workers’ wages are incredibly different. We learned that the average annual income in Vietnam is $1200 (US dollars!). This is a fraction of the annual income of a full-time minimum wage worker in America.
America is all about equality and as such strives to create a diverse work environment with equal opportunities for all races, genders, etc. This concept of a diversity is not recognized in Vietnam. We learned that Vietnamese-run companies have the right to discriminate for basically whatever they want. For example, if a Vietnamese company is looking to hire 15 new employees they have the right to only hire 15 men who are between the ages of 21 and 23, who weigh a certain weight and stand a certain height. No company would ever get away with this type of discrimination in America.
Solely considering the difference in worker wages it is clear that American companies have the opportunity to be exponentially more profitable if they produce their products in a country like Vietnam. This is why so many companies are doing this! Unfortunately this takes away jobs from American workers, increasing our nation’s unemployment rates and decreasing citizens’ morale.
Educational Breadth as Professional Development:
There is absolutely no way I would be able to even imagine what the engineering needs would be in Vietnam if I had not visited. Maybe I won’t ever need to know about these needs in this particular country or any country for that matter, but I can guarantee that I will need to have the ability to understand and adapt to something different than I am used to. Studying abroad, particularly in a country as different as Vietnam, has given me this ability.
It is harder for me to think of similarities between America and Vietnam than it is for me to think of differences. It is on the complete opposite side of the world and they do a lot of things completely opposite how we do them here. The fact that they do so many things differently does not mean their way is better or worse than our way. This is something that became evident to me the longer and longer we were there. As I became more used to life in Vietnam, it became easier for me to understand why they do the things the way they do.
I learned so much in Vietnam that it seems like it should be a graduation requirement to study for some amount of time in a different part of the world. I learned things I never would have learned in a classroom without even realizing I was learning at all! I hope to study abroad again in the future to a different region of the world so I can see how people live and businesses operate in yet another new place. Having learned so much in just two weeks, I can only imagine what I could learn from studying abroad for a longer period of time.
Lifelong Learning, Continuing Education as Professional Development:
The individuals we met with in Vietnam did not say much about their education, and the ones who did seemed to have United States university educations. Having said that, I’m sure most (if not all) of the professionals who presented to us were college educated, but it is clear that a college education is not as common in Vietnam as it is here in the United States. Because most people are not college educated workers learn how to do their job on site. Workers seem to have very specific jobs that they learn to do very efficiently and very well. Just because some jobs are not pre-education based does not mean they don’t change overtime particularly as technologies advance. Workers in Vietnam (and America) are responsible to learn about these technological advancements, learn how the advancements affect their jobs, and make the appropriate changes as they obtain new knowledge.
Lifelong learning is a very important concept to accept and put into action. If we do not strive to expand our knowledge, we’ll never do anything new and more importantly never keep up with the rest of the world who is striving to learn more. For example, both my parents are photographers who got their degrees over thirty years ago before the birth of digital photography. If they wouldn’t have learned the art of digital photography there is no way they would be able to compete with other photographers today.
The Social Environment of Professional Life:
I personally didn’t observe much overlap between the social and professional life of the Vietnamese. In fact, the only place I got a mere glimpse that the workers had a social life is Glass Egg Digital Media where some employees had pictures of friends and family on their desks.
I found that the Vietnamese students knew a lot more about what my life is like in America than I knew about their life in Vietnam. They knew about President Obama, they knew about the Boston bombings and even the Oklahoma tornadoes (which I’m pretty sure occurred when we were there). Now that I think of it, it’s kind of embarrassing that I “lived” in Vietnam for two weeks and cannot tell you one thing that was on television there, or on the news, in the news, or on the radio.
The importance of a general knowledge of contemporary issues kind of relates back to what I said about knowing about the needs of people in different areas of the world. As an engineer, if I am not aware of global issues I will not be able to do anything to solve these issues.
Functioning on Multi-Disciplinary Teams:
The group of students that traveled to Vietnam this year was amazing. We were the most random bunch of students from nerdy engineers to classic frat guys which made the trip amazing! These personality differences amongst us seemingly disappeared in a social and professional environment, but whether we were business or engineering students was very evident in the professional environment (at least to me). The business students on the trip were able to apply what they learned freshman year to ask very insightful questions on the company visits, but it seemed like I (as an engineer) found it difficult to come up with such questions. This proved to me how important it truly is to have multi-disciplinary teams who work together to play off each other’s strengths.
Communicating in this type of environment could be very difficult. People who choose different majors not only think differently, but have an incredibly different knowledge base. Engineers don’t understand economic concepts any more than business students understand thermodynamics so sharing ideas would be especially difficult.
