Our last day in Florida was reserved for the ultimate Disney park – Disney World! This experience woke up and shook up everyone’s inner child and made it come out to play! It was impressive to experience Disney World which is as big as one city, with its 7 different theme parks and amazing logistics employing over 28.000 of workers. Impressive! The entire “Disney story” is indeed an admirable entrepreneurial endeavor that combined opportunity, idea and great amount of dedication.
Final ceremony in Disney world ends with an astonishing fireworks which lasts for 20 minutes and an electronic parade of all Disney characters. It was definitely a place to be!
After this magical experience, we had to go back to Rosen campus and to start packing. It was really hard to say goodbye to all those amazing experiences and people who welcomed us, but our exchange was coming to an end.
I would like to say thanks to several institutions and persons who helped create this personal and professional development experience possible! They are: University of Zagreb, Faculty of Organization and Informatics, UCF McNair Scholars program and to our friend from McNair, especially to Michael Aldarondo-Jeffries, the director of the McNair program and to his McNair scholars who were our friends and our guides throughout this exchange!
With our bags packed with souvenirs, our minds with knowledge and amazing memories, our hearts with wonderful feelings we set our way to Croatia to spread the word about this amazing exchange that we had the privilege to participate in!
Thank you, you wonderful people for being our friends!
16th of March, 2013. Danijel Dadović came as closes to space exploration than he ever was before. Danijel visited Kennedy Space center! :D
Ever since I was a little child, I was fascinated with the exploration of space and all of the mysteries which it holds. From the moment I saw in our agenda that we will be visiting NASA, I was completely excited and couldn’t wait for this day to come!
We kicked off our visit with standard photo shooting next to the NASA logo and then went sightseeing. We had the privilege to see several important buildings, such as:
- Central Instrumentation Facility
- Crawler way
- KSC Headquarters Building Headquarters Building
- Launch Complex
- Launch Control Center
- Missile Crawler Transporter Facilities
- Operations and Checkout Building
- Vehicle Assembly Building–High Bay and Low Bay
During our ride through the enormous complex, we even saw couple of alligators chilling in the canals next to the road, which made our trip even more exhilarating.
In the exhibit area, we saw several rocket models that are true recreations of genuine ships that were launched in to the space. A-mazing! We even saw and touched a rock that was collected from the Moon itself! It is an understatement to say that I was super happy to be there!
We paid a visit to the Memorial Hall with a display of all of the astronauts that died during space related actions. One of them is Ronald McNair, an astronaut who died during the launch of the Space Shuttle Challenger. McNair Scholars program was named after this brave astronaut.
This entire experience left me over thrilled, full of positive impressions with the will, stronger than ever, to go to the space and become a member of the space crew! :)
Still being in a good mood after the amazing day of research presentations and Information Fluency conference, we couldn’t even imagine what lay ahead of us the next day… We were thrilled when our generous hosts told us that they have a surprise for us and that it is a trip to Miami which is only an hour away from Cuba and Bahamas!
In the entrance to Miami, it was impressive to see spectacular city skyline, amazing weather and landscape just like in movies who have “taught” us so far about these wonderful sites of the world. Even though we didn’t stay in Miami for too long, because of other commitments, we had the opportunity to take a swim in the ocean and to get a nice tan (sunburn :)) by lying on this amazing sand beach. We also took a walk through the city, first handedly experiencing the American and Spanish culture at the same time.
This unforgettable experience made me go through my movie and series database, find the ones about Miami and to watch them all over again! Only this time, when watching the Miami scenery, I will proudly say: “Yep, I was there!” :)
Finally, the day has arrived when we presented our research with great pride within the 4th Student's Symposium: Research Topics on Intercultural Learning in the International Context.
Presentations were held in front of the McNair Scholars who had many questions and participated in the discussions with great enthusiasm. First presentations were the general ones and their topics revolved around Republic of Croatia, city of Varaždin, educational system in Croatia and Faculty of Organization and Informatics.
After the general presentations, we got to present our research topics. My topic was Perceptions of Multicultural College Students Case-Study: Influence of Multicultural Environment on Students in Europe, North America and East Asia.
Research was about different perceptions of students from 3 different continents and about their attitude towards multicultural environment and aspects of studying/working abroad, the importance of international contacts etc.
It was very interesting to hear different opinions form McNair Scholars who come from various parts of the world, such as Puerto Rico, Vietnam, Persia, USA etc. After the presentations, we had fruitful discussions over launch where we further talked about many interesting topics and set foundations for future cooperation on many fields.
Despite the ironic situation of some of us catching a cold in one of the world’s most warm countries, we have continued with our research and mutual cultural exchange. Day started casually in the company of dr. Cecilia Milanes, who privileged us with a reading of her new book and music soundtrack made by her husband and herself. After this interesting cultural experience, miss Milanes gave us her signed book and a CD as a priceless souvenir to take home with us.
Next interesting person who welcomed us in her office was Harriet L. Elam-Thomas, UCF Diplomacy Program Director and ex ambassador of the USA to Senegal. She is really interesting, intelligent and capable person to have conversation with about her numerous international experiences both in her personal and professional life.
Finally, the time has come to attend the long expected Information Fluency conference where we had the opportunity to present International Student Research Symposium and various other international activities that we do. In addition to this, we had the opportunity to attend several sessions on that topic which proved itself as a very useful experience.
The campus of University of Central Florida is so impressive in size that even people who study or work there, still haven’t seen and gotten to know it completely. We have had the luck to meet get to know the campus up close through a guided tour form one of the McNair students, Vu Nguyen from Vietnam.
Vu has shown us some of more important locations on the campus and through fun stories got us a little bit closer to knowing the history and tradition of the UCF. For example, the logo of the UCF is represented with two characters. One of them is Pegasus, which stands for academic aspect of the University, and the other one is a knight called Knightro who represents the sport side of the UCF.
Most of the students in UCF are enrolled in Engineering, which is located in one of the buildings with really impressive contents. In the lobby of the building, there are various items that were made by the UCF students which include various models, roller-coaster trains for theme park Disney-world, space shuttle models etc. At the end of the tour, Vu told us that UCF students have the opportunity to participate in various extracurricular activities and the ones I found particularly interesting were kayaking and canoeing. One additional interesting fact is that the food which students eat around here is grown by them in a specially equipped arboretum.
One could really get used to living and studying on UCF!
p.s. Vu, if you are reading this, THANK YOU for an awesome and fun time! :D
After yesterday’s “cultural day”, we went back to the campus to continue our research about opportunities that UCF provides. Firstly we visited the University Library where we met with Laila Miletic-Vejzovic, Special Collections & University Archives, who is originally from Zadar, Croatia. She showed us the structure of their archives and the way they “do business”.
After a little dose of reminiscence about the way of life in Croatia, we set our way to go to lunch with two very important persons, dr. Elliot Vittes, Interim Provost & Dean of Undergraduate Studies and dr. Rick Shell, Vice President & Chief of Staff. We had a very fruitful conversation while having a delicious lunch. Topics were revolved around opportunities in Croatia, exchange programs, future cooperation plans etc. Afterwards, we went to see recruitment officers for the UCF who showed us how they do their job internationally and what is there to do if we decided to be one of 1600 international students that study here. For those interested in more information, visit http://www.imagine.ucf.edu/.
The third day, our generous hosts decided to surprise us with one of the cultural aspects who was completely now to me – musicals. We went to see and experience the musical Wicked which is very well accepted on Broadway. If you want to know more about it, you can visit their website http://www.wickedthemusical.com/.
That experience was interesting, however, after 3 hours of singing and dancing, I concluded that musicals, after all, “are not my thing”. :) The awesome thing was that we met more McNair scholars, who are an amazing bunch of people! After that, we went out on a ride through Orlando downtown which showed us various aspects of living in the USA, both wealthier and less fortunate ones. We brought our day to an end by socializing with friends from McNair program on a dinner in one place. What place? Well, you’ll have to find that our on our Facebook pages. :)
First official day of our exchange started with a tour of the UCF campus which is really impressive, both in size and content. There are more than 60.000 students on this campus who are enrolled in one of 30 study programs and everything is situated in the area whose size would make a small city very proud.
We have visited several institutions; however I would dedicate special attention to one of them, Experiental Learning & Career Learning Services which supports students in their professional and academic orientation. We had the opportunity to hear from the first hand about “how it is done in UCF”. Students can attend various expert counseling, get educated about how to write a resume and how to get prepared for a job interview etc. Several facts about this institution:
- building of the new venue had a cost of 8,5 million dollars and 99% of the funds was given by students of the UCD
- potential employers have job interviews with students within the institution
- students are encouraged to take internships in the duration up to 3 semesters
- 80% of the students who do the internships get employed right after they graduate
In the conversation with the Vice President of the University, dr Maribeth Ehaz, we found out a lot about the way of students’ life, their engagement in student activities and student life in general. What I found particularly interesting and impressive is really high level of dedication and commitment which is invested by a student in volunteering, helping other colleagues and general contribution to the wellbeing of the University through charity work, outstanding affection towards the institution and various different aspects of studying in UCF.
Our second official day started in a more relaxed note with additional familiarizing with American culture and the way their educational system works. In my previous blog, I have mentioned that here in UCF, students have the opportunity to utilize well developed internship program which is implemented in their class system.
With that in mind, one of more popular study programs is Hospitality Management which specializes students for management in various touristic sectors. Some of the students do their internships in a theme park Universal Studios which is impressive both in size and content. We decided to combine work with pleasure so we went there to see experience from the first-hand how they do their internships and to try out many fun rides and rollercoasters. It is an understatement to say “you should have DEFINITELY been there”! :)
