Someone once asked me: are you going to save the world? I responded: I hope so. Study abroad has been my dream since high school. I have always been fascinated with the way people live in countries other than my own. In high school, I learned mostly about American culture and history, but I wasn’t given the opportunity to learn about a particular country or area. I only learned the big picture, which made me think about countries around the world and wonder. Did people have similar laws, did they wear the same clothes, did they go to the movies? These questions still stick with me whenever I go someplace new. In high school I traveled to Ireland, England and Scotland with my classmates. That was my first engagement with a different culture, and I learned how similar people are to Americans in the way they dressed and went to school, yet they had a different culture from mine. Culture is about traditions and language; these are unique to each group of people. I love learning their culture and absorbing myself in it. When I was younger, I would have been afraid to go to a new country and experience a new culture. Now I think that it is a blessing that I even have that opportunity. Being given the chance to study in a foreign country would open my eyes to the world around me and would enable me to fully immerse myself in the culture of Italy.
As a result of my experiences in high school, I decided to study about the global world in college, which led me to pursue a Global Studies major with Economics. I am currently enrolled in a seminar at the American Antiquarian Society in Worcester, Massachusetts, where we examine the natural and built environments around us. Whenever I go anywhere now I look closely at the landscape around me and wonder what it was like fifty years ago, and what it will look like fifty years from now. In my final research project, I am studying the history of the Quabbin Reservoir in Central Massachusetts. Four towns were destroyed and wiped off the map to create the reservoir, and I wonder sometimes what I would do if the place I knew was going to be flooded? This seminar has helped me learn to take a second look at my surroundings, and I want to explore a new place with this new skill I have acquired. By going to Europe, I will be able to think about the landscapes even more, because people have lived there for much longer and there is much more history there. I can try and imagine what the landscape was like 500 years ago and the changes that occurred, and I would be able to find out; that is something that I’m not able to do here.
I have also been studying the Italian language for the past two years, and I hope to improve my foreign language skills in Italian as well as other languages. Living in Italy, I will have to rely on my Italian to help me travel throughout the city and the country, therefore exposing me to Italian as a native language through conversations with locals. I want to fully absorb the Italian life by speaking little English. I really enjoy learning new languages and being able to understand someone when I hear them speak. In the classes I will take, I want to learn more about the history of Italy and will be able to immerse myself more because I will be living among the history.
Study abroad will also help me become an enhanced member of a global society. In college, I am involved in an array of activities, including service trips, mentoring a young girl in the community, running a fundraising program for St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital, running Campus Ministry retreats, and giving tours to prospective students. By studying abroad I will be able to broaden my knowledge even more and hopefully find something new that I enjoy. Many of the things that I do now I never imagined myself doing when I first came to Assumption and never even crossed my mind in high school. I hope to become a better learner by learning about culture inside and outside the classroom. Professors abroad will be able to offer more culturally diverse perspectives than the professors that I have encountered at Assumption.
I also want to explore another culture through the lens of service. Within the United States I have traveled to New Orleans to help the victims of Hurricane Katrina and to Baltimore, Maryland, where I worked with Habitat for Humanity, and I witnessed the poverty within these cities. I was also given the opportunity to go to Memphis, Tennessee and participate in a leadership conference with St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital and saw more of the south. Every city is unique and suffers from its own problems and I enjoy learning about the struggles each city faces, and help where I can. Whenever I travel to new places like this, I like to take in the community and the environment around me. When will I get a chance to experience a place like this again? This is what motivates me to go abroad. I want to take in their culture, learn their customs, and learn why they do what they do.
After graduation, I hope to do service for a year or two and then go on to study International Relations in Graduate school. I hope to travel around the world and learn how things have changed, why they changed, and who was affected in the process, because someone is always suffering due to the changes in our environment. I want to do service projects and help those around me, whether it be helping them build a safer home or giving them a better education. Service is such a big part of my life, and I have only been given the opportunity to conduct that service within my own country. I want to expand my knowledge and share my passion with the rest of the world. Being able to learn more about even just one country would help me see how I want to help the world around me. As I stated earlier: Someone once asked me: are you going to save the world? I responded: I hope so. I believe with all my heart that I will be able to achieve this.
This was the essay I wrote back in December for my application for my summer in Italy. I haven't decided yet if I believe all that I wrote today, even though its only been six months.
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