35 Jahre: 1982-2017

For Students

 

Description: "My two major projects were Truck 2020 and Future Watch for Vans; in both cases, I worked on the NAFTA market outlook.  This involved examining and identifying current trends in the market and trying to predict qualitatively  what would happen down the road 10-15 years from now.   As a result, the two projects overlapped on a lot of material - looks on what the government would be doing soon, analysis of major bills and laws that were going through congress at the time - but some of the 'softer' descriptors, such as such as driver lifestyle (the freight truck driver demographic looks a little different from the van market), the logistics market versus the personal use market, were different and interesting to examine. At the end of the internship, I compiled a list of resources for research on the US market that the office saw itself doing more of in the future. I visited the office a year afterwards and found out that they had followed through and interviewed people based on that resource that I had compiled for them."

Comments: "Personally, I found reading up about the trucking industry extremely interesting.  Transportation is indeed such a huge part of both German and American culture, and I hadn't thought about it in an analytical manner before.  I'm glad I had my internship - it's made me aware what some "fuzzy" research in the corporate world is like.  Later on my junior year, the work that I had done helped me formulate my prospective honors thesis topic.

Berlin is an amazing place to be as a student.  There are endless cultural opportunities available at a real student's budget thanks to generous government subsidies, and the city really comes alive during the summer months. The Internship gave me an idea of what it's like to live abroad again, this time without the support structure of the rest of my family.  I appreciate the fact that I found it extremely easy to integrate into German student life - something I doubt I would have the opportunity to do (at least with the same amount of ease) in many other cultures that keep foreign students apart."

Personally rewarding: "Creating something that was not just an exercise or idea, but a product that would actually see production. This was the first time I experienced that, and it was very rewarding.  And I was able to start building my professional portfolio, which is critical in finding jobs."

For further information, please write to: rabow@stanfordalumni.org