Graduates in their 20s who made a career change

Ms. KUDO Nami

PROFILE
Sun Light Human TDMC Co., Ltd.

Graduated from J. F. Oberlin University
Completed the Master Program of Innovation for Design and Engineering in 2016.

Learning from my classmates who embody my ideal.

Studying at AIIT allowed me to put what I learned and understood into practice.

I had to change-these thoughts pushed me to enroll at AIIT when I passed my mid-20s.

It was in the fourth year at the company I joined after graduating from university. I was a member of a cross-sectional project team where I took part and thought I had mastered my work. I was faced with the reality that I could not communicate well with the members of other departments.

Although I read business books in search of the reason for not making progress working with people from different fields, I could never fill the gap between the knowledge I gained from these books and my actions. When I became convinced that I should learn through experience, I raised my hopes that AIIT's education, which emphasizes PBL and other group projects, would help me reinvent myself. Because I looked for changes that were not an extension of my previous experience, I enrolled at AIIT after leaving my company to cut my escape route.

Proof of growth started to manifest in day-to-day operations.

I had the aspiration to become a person with whom people want to work. I met many people at AIIT who were my classmates and who became my role models.

There were some people who were good at creating an atmosphere for people to actively share their opinions in a group. There were some people who could clarify the challenges in a project to involve other people with a positive approach. Even though they were my classmates, they built their careers in society. Watching the actions of these classmates who had more experience in life helped me develop a concrete image of who I wanted to become. In addition, by working with them in group projects and PBL, I had a clear vision of the abilities I lacked and the perspectives that my classmates had in common.

For example, in a discussion, I saw that my classmates demonstrated an attitude of understanding the intentions of what others said. They could clearly provide evidence and the reasoning for their opinions. I learned a lot from my classmates who naturally did things that I could not do despite having the knowledge, which was a fascinating element of AIIT that I found after enrolling in the program.

Of course, I could go on and on about what I learned from professors.

From the classes, I acquired the ability to construct plans, design skills for visual composition, handle negotiations outside the company, communicate as a team manager, and demonstrate work-related ethics for my current job.

Today, I have the idea that work always involves collaborating with others as the premise. I am now able to naturally share with other people by clarifying the process, not just the results, as well as to reconcile the needs of others with what I can do in a calm manner without being obsessed with my subjective view. After spending two years at AIIT, I look at myself carefully getting ahead in my work from a perspective that I could never have imagined before entering AIIT; I feel that I am taking the small steps to becoming the person I aspire to be.