When I started planning out my college years, I really had no intentions or plans to take time to study abroad. I didn’t want to go away for an entire semester, and it didn’t seem like it would make a lot of sense with my major, but last spring I was meeting with my advisor when she told me about the summer opportunities to study abroad. A deep interest and desire stirred within me to see the world before I graduated and entered the workplace. Turns out, the psychology department was taking a summer trip to Leipzig, Germany and I would be able to put class credits towards my minor by going. It all started to fall into place for me, and I decided, a little bit on a whim, that I was going to do it.
I think the seeds were planted in me to grow my worldview by my dad who has traveled all over with the military and his civilian job. He has always seemed to have a deeper understanding of people, culture, and the way everything works, and I’ve always admired him and slightly envied him for being able to have that. Studying abroad with ACU was my opportunity to gain a little more insight and expand my own worldview, and it definitely did not disappoint in that regard. In just a month, I traveled to five different countries, purposefully choosing countries with obviously different cultures, geography, and languages. I wanted to take full advantage of my time across the pond. As a class, we were based in Leipzig, Germany, but we traveled to several other cities and towns within the country. Over the time we had free for travel, I made my way to France, Austria, Italy, and Croatia. I was completely fascinated and taken aback at how just a five-hour train ride would drop me off in a completely new place with a new landscape, new culture, and new language. Everything was so different than what I was used to back home. All of these places showed me something new about the world, but also something new about myself.
I know that studying abroad has a great impact on your academic and cultural experience, but I believe that it also does wonders for you as an individual. Spending a month traveling in foreign lands reveals a lot about your strengths and weaknesses, grows your interpersonal skills and relationships with people very different than you and encourages you to be independent and courageous in a lot of ways. I thought I had an idea of my strengths and weaknesses, but it’s different seeing them at play. I’d consider myself very social, but I was far out of my comfort zone and had to connect with the complete strangers I was living with for a month. I was already an independent person, but I grew in confidence because I would solve problems and figure things out along the way. I had to trust the Lord and really make an effort to maintain and grow in my relationship with Him because I was not surrounded by believers or my community or my home church.
Now when I think back, I can’t imagine not getting to go study abroad at some point before leaving ACU, because the experiences I had, places I saw, and lessons I learned over there are irreplaceable.
