Lunch with the “elite”

Today was a good day. Today, the Norwegian Consulate General from the Norwegian Embassy visited Hawai’i and HPU. He is in charge of the 13 most western states in the United States, and came mainly to Hawai’i to talk to members of congress and leaders in business & entrepreneurship to promote "Innovation Norway". But he was also kindly enough to visit us at HPU and give the Norwegian students a little informative speech with a Q&A part towards the end of the speech he held.

Before this, me and two other students (Liss Maria Myrvang & Andreas Hetland) were lucky enough to eat lunch with him along with the Vice President for Acadamic Affairs Dr. John Kears, Dr. Cathrine Linnes (the advisor for the Norwegian Student Association) and Dr. Brian Metcalf (advisor for the Psychology Club, and advisor for HPU’s Psi Chi chapter – the psychology honor society) so it was a great lunch. The Consulate General (Sten A. Rosnes) had a lot of questions to the students, how we felt about Hawai’i and how Norway as a nation could advantage from sending students abroad, and also how we are able to use our experiences her to our advantage when we are going back to the Norwegian job-market.

What we all agreed on, is that the greatest thing about studying abroad, and especially Hawai’i and HPU is that it is like you get two educations. One in your major, and one in cultural understanding. As most of you know, Hawai’i is a segway between America and Asia. HPU got students from every state in the US, and from over 100 countries, it is an international school. The small classes are supportive for a “discussion forum” instead of normal lectures. This makes students understand different cultures better as you often enter a classroom and you have students from 10 different countries in one class of 30. It is nothing but amazing. So what did I mean by getting two educations? Well, first of all, we are at an university to get a degree in whatever field of interest you’ve chosen. But at the same time, by meeting and interacting with people from all over the world, you’ll get a perspective you can get nowhere else and you will also be able to understand cross-cultural differences on a whole new level. This is knowledge you can only get by being there first-hand; you may read as much as you want about different cultures, but before you actually experience it hands-on, you don’t really know much. And that is also the reason why Sten A. Rosnes and others are trying to encourage people to study abroad or take their whole education abroad. Because the last ten years the numbers of students abroad have stagnated, and that’s something the Norwegian government don’t want.

For more information visit those two links:
- From HPU.edu's site
- The official site of the Consulate General