Hi! I’m Rafaella Mufarech, and I am from Peru. I major in Writing with minors in Dramatic Writing and Business Management and Entrepreneurship. Even though I write in English, my first language is Spanish.
I chose to come on this trip because I'm always looking to learn about other creative industries, including those that collaborate with writing. I believe that developing social strategy skills is vital regardless of your career or focus. As an international student, I also saw other benefits to this trip.
I look for experiences that expose me to new ideas and place me outside my comfort zone. And as a writer, I find they are highly valuable as they inspire and inform future work. During this trip, I grew as a person, a writer, and a creative professional and got to collaborate with many talented artists.
Hello
My name is Rafaella
Exploring London
Join us as we explore London!
Shopping, art, christmas lights, and more.
An Overpacker's Worst Nightmare
I sat on the floor, staring at the piles of clothes covering half my room and back to my carry-on. It lay open, tempting me. There's no way, I thought.
I took a deep breath, and when that didn't work, I called my friends and mother to complain, which I am ashamed to admit is a common occurrence when I face an unwelcome challenge. After several dramatic texts over outfits, and skincare, and hair products, and shoes, and makeup, I decided the best way to tackle this problem would be to leave it to the last minute.
So, as I struggled to shove my bursting carry-on into the overhead compartment for my first flight of many, overwhelmed with the feeling I had forgotten something important. I couldn't help but wonder if I was leaving behind anything I would need.
After multiple trains, planes, buses, cars, and walks dragging my carry-on through cobblestone streets, I am happy to say that not only I survived, but I am grateful I didn't travel with a checked suitcase.
I realized that overpacking gives me a sense of safety, a false one—a boost of confidence and an illusion of preparedness towards any hurdle or barrier I could encounter. There is nothing an extra shirt would have done if I missed a connecting flight, or another pair of socks would fix if I got lost. But having it seemed oddly comforting.
Now, with countless stories of wrong turns and missed flights, I've been left to question: when do we overestimate something we think we need? And more importantly, when do we underestimate it? Whether it is a sweatshirt you use way too much or skill or ability you have overlooked. What is worth keeping with you?
A Day at SCAD Lacoste
Take a look at a day in the SCAD Lacoste Campus!
Exploring, games, classes, photoshoots, and more.
The Meeting
I remember our first meeting. I sat in the hotel lobby, jet-lagged and nervous. I arrived that morning in a country I had never been to before to meet people I had seen on zoom twice and to take a class that didn’t belong to my major. I would travel to several cities despite my slight fear of planes. I would room with classmates who, at that moment, were names on a spreadsheet. And I would participate in a class that would force me to step out of the comfort of a word document. I was excited, but I honestly did not know what to expect from those three weeks of travel.
Looking back at our weeks abroad, it has become clear that chaos brings harmony. It was the hangry moods, freezing bus rides, and wrong turns that led to frantic google map searches that turned into the anecdotes we later shared and laughed about.
Before this trip, I had somehow mastered stepping outside of my comfort zone while still leaving a foot behind. Traveling across the world with strangers, interacting in my second language, and participating in social media made this one of the few times I have genuinely embraced discomfort and uncertainty.
As a person that finds comfort in planning, situations with an uncertain nature are something I tend to be forced into rather than doing so by choice. Yet this trip has proven that the chaotic moments one wants to avoid are the key shared experiences that will create memorable connections. It turned a group of strangers with different backgrounds into acquaintances and then, slowly, into friends.
Exploring France
Join us as we explore France!
A Writer Abroad
When I applied for this excursion, I mentioned that as a writer, I look for experiences that expose me to new ideas and expand my knowledge. As an international student, I moved away from my family and country and immersed myself in a new culture surrounded by people of various nationalities. I was sure that taking a risk and stretching my comfort zone once again, even if only for a couple of weeks, would lead to experiences that would serve as invaluable inspiration for future work in either fiction or non-fiction. After all, place is a character. It reflects time, tone, mood and reveals important information about other characters. I saw Lacoste, London, Rome, and Florence as places filled with potential stories. And they were. But, at the time, I could have never imagined all the other benefits this experience would bring.
I got to step into monuments and see artworks and structures I had seen in textbooks and slide shows. I also took a class outside of my major where I learned about social strategy and business. This new knowledge helped me connect ideas with a new perspective and understanding.
As you see on this website, part of this class required us to document our experience. This created a new level of depth where I balanced being present and taking in the moment while finding a way to document it to share it with others.
At first, taking out my camera felt forced and embarrassing. I was intimidated by social media. Even the idea of posting a temporary story made me anxious. But it helped me learn and gain experience in a new type of storytelling with videos rather than words.
In the end, it became clear that taking calculated risks pays off. I took a chance using what I knew a the time to decide that this would be a valuable experience, and I am so glad I did because it revealed itself to be valuable in so many other ways as well.
Exploring Rome
Join us as we explore Rome!
Art, exclusive shops, guided tours, and more.
Best of Both Worlds
Have you ever been scrolling down your fyp or looking at someone’s followers and ran into a business page or two? Maybe you even follow businesses on social media. Many businesses will use social media to raise awareness and create brand recognition. Being part of social media can expose a business to a global market. This means they will be visible to a larger audience pool and can, therefore, possibly increase their sales.
Knowledge of other cultures, customs, and places can help both the business and the customer. It is all in the strategy and its application. Without it, there might be untapped potential and missed opportunities.
You might be looking for sustainable jeans that become uniquely yours the more you wear them, are mended in the store, and are recycled once they reach their limit. Social media, or a blog on a website, might reveal that there is just a place like that called Nudie Jeans in London and maybe in another city near you.
Or you might be looking for the next series to watch during your free time and run into an adrenaline-filled show about car racing that will turn you into a fan or supporter of a team affiliated with a brand such as Ferrari or Red Bull.
These are all opportunities for possible connections between brands and customers where both can benefit as customers will get the products they need or want, be entertained, meet other fans and possibly purchase and ship products, travel to visit events or storefronts, and spread awareness about brands.
Rome School of
Business
Join us as we explore more of Rome!
Modern art, a cooking class, the Colosseum, and more.
Thank you Rome School of Business!
Search for Perfection
I believe we create businesses as part of our search for perfection in imperfection. We look for inefficiencies and our audiences' pain points to create the ideal product or service to make their experience easier and ideally flawless. After visiting and speaking with several professionals on this trip, it became clear that even the best solution won't succeed if paired with the wrong strategy. If the initial hurdles of turning a concept into a product or service are overcome, the next challenge is getting it to the right person. The professional experts, business owners, and artists we met during this trip gave real-world examples of some of these vital strategies.
Suppose your product offers a new element that isn't currently in the market. In that case, that uniqueness will be your competitive edge as that pain point, or customer need, will be covered by your product and not by the competition. This same idea can be translated to personalized campaigns such as the ones created by RE, a brand-led design and experience business that designs for connection. They work with their clients to understand their vision and create experiences that tell stories rooted in their clients' brands. Their work is unique compared to others on the market and stands out because of it.
However, uniqueness will not always be the angle for your product, so while it is always vital to study your competition, in this case, seeing how you measure against those who have a similar product is key. You must see what angle you can highlight to create a competitive edge. During our time in Italy, we had the opportunity to attend the Rome School of Business to learn and speak with several professionals.
In one of these discussions, we learned about the brand Made in Italy. This brand has a certification that comes with its own regulations. It has been protected and regulated since the 1980s. This umbrella brand has several categories from art, food, retail and more that belong to it and benefit from its reputation. While these same products might be available through other sources belonging to this brand serves as an assurance of quality, craft, durability, and other valuable variables that play a part in a customer's purchase decision. In this case, belonging to the Made in Italy brand gives the product its competitive edge.
Other times to find that edge, it is necessary to consider looking at your product from several perspectives. While using the same product and presenting it in different ways, you can help it stand out for different audiences. During our stay in the UK, we also visited the Manchester United Stadium. They offer an excellent example of this strategy. While they offer merchandise ranging from traditional soccer equipment to hair styling tools, they also expanded to capture a new target audience. In this case, they took on the digital market, offering NFT collectibles for their fans. This is a way to capture a new audience while using their existing branding.
