How I became an Entrepreneurial Citizen at NTU

Hi, I’m Arya and I study a Bachelor of Business at UTS. Recently I went to Nottingham Trent University in the United Kingdom to study at their esteemed Global Summer School Programme. During this time, I studied a course called ‘The Entrepreneurial Citizen – Problem Solving and Solution Creation for Business and Life.

I got to Nottingham on Saturday and that 24-hour plane ride from Sydney to London, followed by a 5-hour coach ride, had me so drained that I slept it all off over the Saturday. On Sunday we had a lovely “Welcome Event” in which I got to meet an abundance of new faces from all over the world and we also got toured around the university. Below I have attached a photo of my very first day of meeting all these amazing individuals and the diversity of countries and cultures just in this one photo is completely incredible.

Now moving on to what we learned during our time in class. This course was so fantastically crafted in a way where we strived to identify our strengths and weaknesses in a very ‘life-like’ way. We then utilised these strengths and weaknesses to act as a bridge or a helping hand to solve problems around the world, from global business to problems within our community and to problems within our own space. Our classes went from 9-4 every day, and we went through concepts such as skills analysis, problem-solving and ideation, storytelling, teamwork, and resilience, all followed by completing daily reflections. 

My course included 8 of us, including myself, with individuals from Canada, China, France, and a fellow Aussie as well and the one thing we all had in common was our determination to learn something new and looking forward to trying out new lunch places together – obviously! After lunch, we would take a lovely little stroll around Shakespeare Street or the Arkwright building that you see below.

In our second week of learning, we were given the opportunity to provide the NTU Enterprise team with a 5-minute video of what Global Summer School meant for us and what value we have gained and this not only gave me a moment to reflect on my experience till that point but I also lived my YouTuber dream for 5 minutes as we can see below.

THE BIG DAY – Presenting our Assessment Task

For this course, our final assessment task was to make a presentation, reflecting on our learning experience and how we were planning to apply the concepts learnt in class to our future, whether that’s personally, professionally, academically, etc. The title of my presentation was the same as my blog post because this experience truly taught me how to be an entrepreneurial citizen, which to me, is someone who uses their strengths and weaknesses to solve problems in the world, which can fall into any and every category. Below is a photo of me, right after my presentation, proudly standing outside the beautifully constructed Dryden Enterprise, which is the epitome of modern architecture and encourages sustainability.

And just like that, Global Summer School at NTU came to a very bittersweet end. I did not expect to feel so many emotions at once when I left NTU, but I did because, after two weeks of spending every day together with such wonderful and loving peers, it was time to go home. We all took with us a piece of summer school, for some it was the time spent with friends, for others it was taking home the contact number of their new friend who lives in another country, for some it was taking a university hoodie back home to remember they were a proud alumnus and for some, just the learnings from the fantastic facilitators.

After this very successful experience at NTU, I made my way back to London where I stayed for another week and even visited neighbouring countries like France.

Final words – if you ever get the opportunity to participate in a Global Short Programme, please go. Not only will you learn something new that you can apply in your academic life or professional career, but the travel itself, spending time alone, meeting new people, exploring places that you have never seen before and learning all the experiences, good and bad, will always teach you more about the world, than any textbook ever will.

Arya Lohar
Faculty of Business
Summer School at Nottingham Trent University, United Kingdom
Global Short Programs Travel Scholarship Recipient