Vienna Classes

The Webster Vienna campus is really just an unassuming four-story building that sits about three blocks from our apartments. It shares an outdoor space with some apartment buildings, but unless you were looking for it you would pass it without even giving it a second glance. I have two classes this term – Strategy & Competition and International Business Law.

The Strategy and Competition class is taught by a professor who came to Vienna from St. Louis just to teach us this term. It’s pretty much the exact same as my capstone class from undergrad, including an online simulation game in which each group runs its own company and has to try to get the highest stock price and ROE by making strategic decisions. Luckily, we were able to pick our own groups so I am working with two people that I like and with whom I get along well. This makes life much easier. Also, this class is held in a computer lab so if the lesson gets a little long I can always go on Facebook or check my email ;)

The International Business Law class is interesting, as our professor is an Austrian lawyer who bring lots of real-life experience and real-world examples to what we’re learning in class. His class is all lecture, though, so the four hours tend to seem like forever. He’s also sometimes hard to understand because he speaks softly at times and he also has these crazy eyes that make him look like he’s constantly staring at the ceiling rather than at the person he’s addressing. In this class I sit by my friend Molly, and on the first day he was going through the class list to put names to faces and make sure everyone was there. My last name being “Bytnar” (and the other Molly’s being “McQuillan”), I got called first and told him I would like to be called Molly instead of Mary. When he got to the other Molly, he said it was going to be confusing having two Mollys so she told him everyone calls her “Little Molly”. The response to this is inevitable that people then ask me if I am “Big Molly”, and I told him he could call me “Big M.” Everyone had a chuckle and we moved on, but he took what I said to heart and he called me that for the entire term.