I am Jamie Ko from Singapore, a fourth-year student at Singapore Management University, taking a double degree in business management and accountancy. I spent a semester abroad in Germany at the University of Mannheim.

The experience allowed me to spend a semester living in a culture, in a country, that is completely different than back home in Singapore, and I really got to understand the differences in the lifestyles of the people over there and coming to respect that, but also realizing that beneath all these cultural differences, they are very much like myself, and if we just overlook all these slight differences, I could actually build friendships and have conversations with these people just like my friends back home in Singapore.

I feel that having understood that there are cultural differences and when we come to respect that, we tend to overlook these differences, and I feel that our generation and the next generation can build and foster friendships and relationships that will help us build and progress our world, instead of having all these conflicts that we had in the past.

In terms of self-development, I had a chance to be more independent when I studied abroad, because I was always studying in Singapore for my entire life, and this allowed me to live alone. When I was travelling, I had to learn to be street-smart, but at the same time, I also had to be open-minded enough to actually immerse myself in the culture of the city that I was travelling in.