Eirini Papadimouli - MA in Professional Communication with a specialization in Intercultural and International Communication (MAPC-IIC)

I’m from Greece, but I live and work in Frankfurt, Germany as a professional translator for the European Union. I’ve been coordinating the Greek language unit for the European Central Bank for almost ten years. I also teach English/Greek translation at the graduate level at the University of Strasbourg in France.

I have a career and a secure job. I could stay there until I’m 65, but I’m looking for growth and change. I want something totally new to challenge what I know and what I can do. I want to satisfy my creativity and need for personal development and do something useful for other people at the same time.

The communication field interested me. But I couldn’t give up my work to study fulltime for a couple of years, so I needed an online learning program. I researched distance learning courses on the Internet and stumbled across RRU. I even found a complimentary review of it in Maclean’s magazine.

I was attracted by RRU’s combination of distance learning and on-site residencies. I wanted to meet my classmates and the people who were going to be teaching me. The opportunity to form team spirit was pretty unique to RRU. I also liked its specialization in intercultural and international communication. I didn’t find that anywhere else.

In my job I have daily contact with people from 25 different countries. I’ve got to know the way people react to certain things, the way they think and talk about certain issues. Our class also includes Canadians from many ethnic backgrounds. You’ll find this diversity in any workplace and, if you understand it, you can avoid tension and conflict.

In my job I work individually. I wanted to see how I’d function in a team: how much I could get out of it and how much I could give to it. From the first day of the program, we started to form teams, get to know each other and work together. I found the range of backgrounds and ages in our program extraordinary.

I’ve begun to familiarize myself with RRU’s online environment. I work in a big institution with sophisticated high-tech facilities, but I’ve found RRU’s training and IT infrastructure much more advanced. I’m impressed with how well organized and user friendly it is.

The teaching method here is different to the one I experienced in Greece or even in France where I did my graduate studies. In Europe the focus is on the professor. At RRU the focus is on the learner. All the faculty members stress this. They encourage you to do your own work, not just reproduce what they think. They challenge you intellectually to learn by doing. I’m sure it will be fruitful!