Matt Lanetti ‘15 & Michael McHugh ‘15
This spring break was a very eventful one for the Friar community. Students embarked on trips to Costa Rica, Portugal, Florida, and even England. We found ourselves with an ocean separating us from our homes. Traveling for the first time out of the US, we landed in Heathrow Airport after a long and tiring flight. After getting a mere 4 hours of sleep, we got off the plane, went through customs, and walked into the foreign world of The United Kingdom. This new world would become our home for the week, and the center for our International Internship.
As we arrived on a weekend, we had some time before we started our internships. Although we were tired from our flight and time zone switch, we tried our best to acclimate to the 5 hour difference as we did some sightseeing. Accompanied by Mr. Ceribelli, we traveled to Windsor Castle, where the queen was currently staying. Here we saw our first Queen’s Guard and found them to be as intimidating as we believed. We then traveled to Stonehenge an hour outside of London. The stones were a beautiful sight to see. They were much taller than expected and seemed very eerie. On Sunday, we took the Tube into London and saw The Tower of London, which is located right on the Thames River, St Pauls, and Tower Bridge. We had trouble traveling around the city, however, because the unexpected London Marathon was being run through the entire city. This proved to be an unexpected challenge, but was awesome to see.
While in the UK, we stayed with Mr. Rob Ceribelli ‘84, and his family, in their home. Mr. Ceribelli and his family moved to a suburb of London when he was offered the managing position within a leasing company he worked for in the US. Mr. Ceribelli now manages the UK branch of De Lage Landen, an international leasing corporation based in The Netherlands. Almost every night we hung out with the Cerebelli children; Michael (16), Meredith (15), James (10). We spent our nights playing FIFA, soccer, basketball, and a wide array of other things. Although they have been living in England for six years, they all had true Philly accents.
Each day of the week we spent time shadowing the various departments of De Lage Landen, learning the ins and outs of a professional workplace. We started in the Hard Assets department, where we saw first hand how De Lage Landen handles leasing of industry equipment such as tractors, farming equipment, and forklifts. These “hard” products have tangible value that does not easily diminish with time as new technologies emerge. An example of “soft” assets would be server rooms or computer hardware that quickly becomes outdated and worthless in relatively short periods of time.
De Lage Landen leases soft assets from such technology giants as Cisco and Microsoft. While touring the London business campuses of Cisco and Microsoft we were able to see truly innovative and modern-day workplaces. While Cisco’s was mostly a traditional office complex, Microsoft’s was outstandingly different, with more employees playing xbox and pool than wearing ties.
Throughout the week we picked up on many cultural differences, particularly in business. We learned that in England, one does not say a company goes bankrupt; only individuals can be said to go bankrupt. The English use other terms such as insolvent. Little differences like this, otherwise unnoticed in the brief encounters we previously had with English culture, were manifested in great numbers within our week of stay.
Regardless of all the cultural differences, large and small, we received nothing but the greatest acceptance from De Lage Landen employees.
Read about Joe DiSipio’s & Brendan Hallinan’s 2013 London Internship experience
