Traveling had always been on my mind. ALL throughout high school I had DREAMT of going to Europe. I didn’t care which country- the presumed way of life is something I yearned to experience. Right when I got to college, the first thing I scoped out was the study abroad fair. I had wanted to go to Spain, so I was going to go to Spain. Becoming a Global Scholar and pursuing my global experience only seemed natural for me because of my majors and my interest in learning about different cultures, regions, ways of life, and travel. My study abroad in Spain has been one of the highlights of my life thus far, and changed my life and who I am in so many ways. I attribute a lot of my growth to this experience and I am eternally grateful that I had the opportunity to study in Spain for a semester.
Out of all my coursework and experiences at UW Oshkosh, my study abroad experience was by far the most beneficial and one of the greatest learning experiences thus far in my life. The experience of living in another country by myself for an extended amount of time in and of itself was a huge learning experience. Out of all the things I learned, the amount of personal growth that I acquired is most sacred. The photos that I have attached are proof of all the amazing things I experienced while I was abroad. I was able to travel to five different countries during my semester which gave me insight into so many different cultures and how to interact with them, getting through language barriers, and exploring new places, and learning how to travel.
The courses that I took at Oshkosh relating to the globe, as well as the courses that I took while abroad were beneficial to my global education and understanding because I had a different perspective than others while I was abroad. I was able to start thinking about culture and the aspects of different regions before I took myself to a different culture and region. This was beneficial to my global experience because I was genuinely interested in learning about Spain as a country, region, and culture which enhanced my experience. I think my interest in international affairs and anthropology lead me to have a slightly different experience than other students who had different areas of interest or study. I focused on different things about my experience than those people, and thought about things on a global spectrum. My experiences taught me how to engage in cultural conversation and be comfortable amongst individuals of all cultures, which I see as a foundation for success in any area of global work.
I consider myself a very different person than before studying abroad because of the amount of growth that happened for me while I was there. My interest in traveling and international issues has expanded for one, and who I have become as a result of this experience is someone that I am very proud to be. I have to admit, the growth I am referring to is less professional and education based- but much more personal. I had to go through uncomfortable situations all by myself, figure out how to do things on my own in a different country, I had to make friends, I had to live with a family I did not know, I had to move host families, I had to communicate with people in a language that I was hardly proficient at, I had to interact with people from all over the world with amazingly different world views and views on life, I made life-long friends, I learned so much Spanish, I became part of a family, I went through many uncomfortable situations and difficult times, I embarrassed myself, I learned how to travel and lead others in the experience, and I learned to look at culture and how it relates to the daily lives of people, politics, the economy, and relationships. It was a very neat experience to be able to immerse myself in another culture and make that lifestyle part of my own. Siesta, spending more time with family and appreciating home-cooked meals, socializing, less casual dress, taking time to slow down and not worry as much, are all Spanish cultural habits that I picked up and have been able to enhance my life back in the States. I cannot wait to experience more cultures in the future.
I would contribute much of my growth in the classes that I took in Spain which includes grammar, speaking and writing, a film class, culture and history. This is where a lot of my language skills advanced because I was surrounded completely by Spanish. Although there were students in my classes and in the city from all around the world, we were all in the same place with the same goal; to learn Spanish. This was a very neat environment. The classes that I have taken on campus at Oshkosh have only advanced my global experience because they put the things that I learned and experienced into perspective with the rest of the world and other regions and cultures. I consider myself very lucky to have this global perspective and a strong cultural perspective.