Kelsey Hrubes knew she had a challenge on her hands when she visited Germany as a study abroad student back in 2015.

“I was forced to adapt to cultural norms I had never considered before and try to comprehend everything in a new language,” recalls Hrubes, a software engineer at Microsoft and 2017 Iowa State graduate in German and computer science.

Hrubes says if she hadn’t studied abroad and learned to adjust to new surroundings, she wouldn’t be nearly as confident as she is in her career.