Here’s another thought I’ve been working on: I screwed up my choice of study abroad. Of course, this is a ‘hindsight is 20/20’ thing, but interesting. 3 clearly better alternatives:
1. I shouldn’t have ever touched ISA. Basically all study abroad programs are built for one type of person – the one who has never travelled, doesn’t know any language coming in and isn’t uncommonly independent. Out of the ISA group, I’d estimate that’s around 75%. The job of study abroad programs is to alleviate those three primary concerns. Think about what the programs advertise and you’ll get the idea.
Where we’ve gone wrong is assuming that all exchange students fit that mold. For the other 25%, the efforts of ISA will effectively sabotage the authenticity of your experience and diminish how much you learn and what you get out of it all. Between organizing tours, offering classes in English, holding required excursions with all the other gringos, setting you up to live with families and all other manner of holding your hand, the true experience (for those who want more than pictures and token cultural integration) gets hopelessly lost for the sake of minimizing pain and culture shock. It’s like boiling broccoli – it may make it more palatable to some but destroys the nutrients and reasons to eat broccoli in the first place.
My DIY study abroad plan for the 25% looks like this. Transfer to your new university (you may even get a scholarship). Get a student visa and pack your bags, leaving yourself plenty of time (at least a month) before term starts. When you arrive, travel around the area for a bit to get familiar with the culture and locale. Then, settle in to your city and stay at a cheap hostel, camp or couchsurf while looking for shared student housing opportunities (you’d be surprised how easy it is to jump in on these – a couple of ISAers did it with no problem). Try to meet one or maybe two other exchange students casually to give you an outlet and a travel partner (most local students won’t want to make weekend trips where they’ve already been). Go from there. You’ll also save about 8 grand.
2. I should have gone somewhere else. Like, a different part of the world, in a different language. I knew before this trip that I wanted to learn one more language (at least) after Spanish. What I didn’t define was how far I wanted to learn each. I’ve been hitting the law of exponentially diminishing returns pretty badly here in Chile – that learning a language to 95% is work but learning it to 98% is brutal. With Spanish, knowing just 2500 words will allow you to understand 95% of all speech and text. Getting to 98% comprehension requires learning an additional 25000 words.
In my case, I’m not yet solidly committed to Spanish as my dominant learned language. I have no idea what that will end up being, or even if there will be one. If, in the future, I get a promising opportunity that requires Spanish, I can get started on it with what I have now while I work further on those extra percentage points. But let’s say I take the time I would spend now to perfect Spanish and get 95% of a different language. My options now expand quite a bit. In my view, it’s probably better to have 90+% of a couple of languages than 99% of one, for the same amount of work.
3. I shouldn’t have studied at all. This, in hindsight, blows all other options out of the water. Since I don’t really need any of these credits, I could have avoided UAI/ISA and learned a whole heck of a lot more by taking that money and travelling/volunteering. Doing this offers a range and depth of experiences that is far greater than any study abroad program can touch. Call it minoring in life. A lot of content on this blog has already been dedicated to the topic, so we’ll leave it at that.
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It is what it is. Like I said, time’s not scarce. But… Weeze – I’m lookin at you son!
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