Go Away

By Sara Upton Chief of Staff

t's generally a policy of mine not to hand out advice, but if I were to make one suggestion to all you history majors, computer geeks and cool kids alike, it would be to go away. Abroad. Out. Gone. Goodbye. Walk into your local study abroad office and sign up for anywhere outside of our great nation's borders.

No, I am not an anti-capitalist left wing radical. Nor am I a Europhile looking for a more cultured lifestyle. But to think that a person who has access to an opportunity like spending a semester anywhere in the world could and would pass it up makes me feel all funny inside.

There's a lot of valuable experience to be gained and I'm not talking about museums and other famous and historical sights. Of course, the Taj Mahal and the Eifel tower are fabulous when seen firsthand, but any tourist passing through for the day could have the same experience. Actually living in a foreign country is a whole different ballgame.

Whether the location is Paris, Mali, or Beijing; the local culture, customs and traditions will most certainly be nothing like your own. Gone are the familiar sights and sounds and often, the familiar language. Life is no longer centered around your next exam, the fight you had with your lover, or your next chance to grab a beer. Instead, you become a foreigner, and individual in a country where you may never hope to comprehend the thousand tacit understandings between its inhabitants. And so you are faced with the task of peeling back as many layers of this world as possible. You try to figure out why no one seems to realize what sarcasm is, or what its like to have never seen a washing machine.

In doing this, you may never understand anything more than when you arrived, but you are left with an awareness that yours is not the only point of view, your value system has nothing to do with that of those around you. And in this isolation, you may learn what it is about your own culture, both personal and popular that you can appreciate, and what it is you essentially find meaningless.

If you're worried that by going away, you'll miss a lot at home or at school, put your fears aside, there's a lot more to be had out there.