„Brücken bauen zwischen den Welten“
Internationale Studierende und Absolventinnen sind Brückenköpfe zwischen Welten: Sie verbinden Kulturen, Märkte und Perspektiven und eröffnen neue Möglichkeiten der Zusammenarbeit. Mit ihren Erfahrungen und ihrem Gespür für Zwischentöne werden sie zu Wegbereiterinnen für Innovation – dort, wo unterschiedliche Horizonte aufeinandertreffen. Laura Valentina Niño Cardona zeigt in ihrem Beitrag, wie diese Rolle ihre Sicht auf Karriere und Leben geprägt hat – und teilt persönliche Einsichten aus ihrem Weg als Journalistin und Masterstudentin in Innsbruck.
I’ve always known how to start telling stories, but when I started writing this piece, I was completely blank. Talking about myself, who I am, and my skills? Not my biggest strengths, to be honest. During my bachelor’s degree in communication and journalism in Colombia, I learned how to write about news, about photography skills, to edit audio and video, to frame a narrative, to structure a piece of information, to capture my ideas, and to tell other people’s stories but never mine.
That’s why, instead of bragging about my academic path, I will share with you some lessons I’ve learned from most of the things I’ve experienced that more or less shaped the point I have reached in my career and personal life.
A professor that I truly admired told me back in 2021 some words that, even after 5 years of being said, keep ringing in my head. After having our last session, he told me in a very sweet, almost paternal, way that I had the potential to do great stuff and to reach success in anything I propose, but that, in his opinion, I was too comfortable and that could limit me. At the beginning, I could not help but feel a mix of shame and offense. Had he just called me “mediocre” in a very diplomatic way?
After some weeks after that interaction, it hit me: I started realizing how difficult it would be for me to succeed in what I love if I were just staying in a comfortable bubble, not only in my field, but in life. That’s the reason why in the very next semester during my bachelor’s, I started learning about graphic design, Microsoft Excel, and to learn English, I even took a diploma course on how to manage and monetize audiences for media outlets.
Additionally, during my bachelor’s, I worked as an associate employee in the TV studio of the faculty. There, I produced content, I directed pieces of visuals, I supported peer students, I wired devices as lights and cameras, etc. I worked as well as a freelance journalist, which helped me not only gain experience but also improve my writing and efficiency skills.
Lesson learned: All my life, I’ll have to keep learning. And to be honest, I actually love it!During the time lapse between the completion of my bachelor’s and today (in the middle of my first master’s), I’ve lived, learned, and done much more stuff
I had the honor to work as an intern in the newsroom of one of the most important magazines of my homeland, Revista Semana. I was the happiest in a place that took me out of my comfort zone constantly, with wonderful colleagues and a very inspiring boss.
Since it was my very first job experience, I was constantly anxious about messing things up, about not keeping up with the dynamics, efficiency and the quality of work. I was not very accustomed to not having things under control and that cost me a bunch of tears, but the colleagues there were all so helpful, comprehensive and supportive, that the constant feeling of anxiety quickly faded away. In terms of skills, I did a bit of everything there: Most of the time, I did journalism stuff: writing a lot of news daily, interviewing people, such as the candidates of the presidential elections back in 2021 – among them, the current president of that republic, Gustavo Petro. There, I also had roles assupporting producer, copywriter and editor of the campaign of one of the most ambitious projects of the magazine. The final piece, called “Atlas of Nazism in South America” gave us a special recognition in one of the most important journalism prizes in Colombia, the Simon Bolivar Prize.
Unfortunately, by the time the internship had come to an end, the newsroom crew was shrinking, because of economic reasons, killing my chance of working there permanently. But the experience I had there is not going to be taken away from me.Lesson learned: sometimes, even though you might feel it is your destination, it might be part of your journey. And it’s fine.
Luckily for me, it did not take me longer than a week to find a new job in a communications agency. My Microsoft Excel and writing skills were pretty handy there. Overall, I think that the things that I had to do there were very suited to the skills I had acquired back in my bachelor’s. Unfortunately, the environment there was not what I expected and needed for my professional and personal plenitude. This was an inflexion point that made me realize that I wanted to leave my homeland and experience something that would take me completely out of my comfort zone: moving abroad.In that moment, I only had certainty about two things: where I wanted to go –Austria– and what I wanted to achieve on a midterm goal: getting a master’s degree.In the process of moving abroad, I had to learn how to swim, how to drive, first aid, and a little bit of German. The reason? Even though my destination was the Master’s, the stopover was getting to know Austria, and I would do it the best and most affordable way I could think of: a cultural exchange as an Au Pair.
Overall, I would consider that experience as ethnographic research. I was a participant observer who was constantly asking questions about how everything works in here. Will I be able to adapt to a completely different culture from mine? Are people here as ‘cold’ as social media posts say that Germans are? When will I stop taking personal when they let me know that I’ve done something that upset them? Why are they so obsessed with hiking? Is bureaucracy here as annoying for the Austrians as it is for me? Why is it common to dress in a traditional costume –e.g., Dirndl, Lederhosen– for a wedding, baptism, etc.? Even though I have found the answers to most of those questions, many more are coming to my mind every day. I got lucky –or skilled? – enough to get a spot on the master’s program in Media, Society and Communication at the University of Innsbruck. So far, the biggest takeaways from this journey are:
1. Society has changed a lot since I got my bachelor’s in 2022– and keeps changing every day. Therefore, because of the quick changes and advances of technology, communicators must keep up.
2. AI came to stay in our personal, academic, and professional lives. We should adapt to it and not fear it, but always take precautions and know how to use it responsibly and ethically.
3. Social media can be many things: a weapon, a platform, a network, a message, a culture, a public space, a place.
4. History has been written in a very colonial Eurocentric point of view, and acknowledging the cultures, history, knowledge and oppressions from lands of the global south is not only necessary but also enriching for the way we perceive the world.
The last lesson mentioned above, I learned not only during my academic experience in Innsbruck, but also from the Afro-Asian Institute Salzburg. They could see the potential in me, got determined to support me in multiple aspects during the challenging experience of being an ‘ausländer’ student from so far away and to give fuel to my curiosity, my optimism, and my willingness to be an agent of change through my field of studies.
I keep trying to learn as much as I can, questioning things every day and taking a valuable lesson from anything that happens to me and putting it into practice and if possible, spreading it. My experience here has not yet come to an end, since I’m in the middle of my master’s, but I am looking forward to knowing what’s next for me.
