People. You will meet a miriad of people you would otherwise not get a chance to cross paths with. They will have very different backgrounds from yours, not only in that they are from another part of the United States, but in that they are from another part of the World! Yes, there are international students on most campuses in the U.S., but they are always in minority. Abroad, most people will be international to you.

Language. If you go to a country where another language is spoken you will have a very eye-opening experience in that you will notice how much language matters in everyday life. Even if you go to an English-speaking country you will notice differences in accents. This will remind you that your world back at home is not the only world out there. By learning another language, another dielect, you are also learning about another culture. This can be done to some extent in books, but it happens on an undescribable level when you are surrounded by new experiences 24 hours a day.

Way of life.What? Not everybody has a homepage? Not everybody watches ER? Not everybody eats cereal for breakfast? Not everybody celebrates July 4th? Not everyobody gets excited about the Superbowl? OK, these may be trivial issues and you may have known that the answer to all these questions is "No, not everybody does.", but there are so many little details of life that we take for granted. These gain increasing importance and are seen in a different light once you realize that people in different parts of the world attach different values to them.

Travel. Once you're abroad, no one is going to keep you tied to one town. You will be hiking, taking the train, finding various means of transportation to get out and explore as much of the area and region of your destination as possible. This is not required, but you will notice that so much is at your fingertips that you will just want to go and explore more. Most programs are designed to leave you time for such activities. And so you'll meet even more people, you'll get to know even more cultures, you'll see even more places, it's mind boggling!

Different coursework.Your courses may cover material similar to that of courses at your home university or college, but they may be presented in a very different light, yet one more mind expanding experience. Not to mention that you may be able to take classes that you could not have taken back home. You can study from world-reknown scholars who will not make the trip to your school, but you can make the trip to theirs. You will also learn about different examination procedures, different studying styles, but you may decide to hold on to your old patterns and teach your new classmates about your methods. They may find those better. I had appreciated many things about my college even before going abroad, but being in a different system made me appreciate certain things even more. But to arrive at that conclusion I had to see and experience other systems at work.

The Learning Element. Life abroad was not always easy. But you learn a lot from hard and challenging situations. Perhaps most importantly you learn termendous amounts about yourself. You learn about your assumptions, your prejudices, your needs, your likes and dislikes, you learn who your friends are, you learn how important your home base may or may not be. The key is you keep on LEARNING. After all, that's what life is about and that's why most of us went to college in the first place.

There's always more. There is no way that I can cover all the advantages of studying abroad on this page. If you have additional thoughts or questions, please consider contacting me, see the feedback info below.

What I can say is that I think about my year abroad all the time. I came back from my year abroad more than two years ago and it still is alive in my memory. I still compare, I get nostalgic, I feel lucky I am here not there, I miss those places. See? They are very mixed feelings. But they are intense. And intense feelings are nice to have, because you know you experienced something profound to have affected you enough to look back upon it so much and in so many ways.

So please, do consider studying abroad for a semester or a year!

Are you convinced now that you should study abroad? Not yet? Well, how about checking out my page dedicated to the year I spent abroad in Geneva, Switzerland.

Disclaimer: Yes, the United States is a very diverse country in itself so you may think it is not necessary to leave it to acquire an experience of diversity. But you don't really know what diversity is until you've left the borders of one country to explore the culture of another first hand.

Feedback please! You can send me a note if there are any requests on what you would like to see here. Thoughts, comments, disagreements about what I say? Please let me and others know by signing my Guestbook. You may also view the Guestbook if you wish.

Not up to signing the Guestbook? Send e-mail to eszter@geocities.com.

For my personal page, see http://cs.smith.edu/~hargitta.

Last updated: July 21, 1997; http://www.geocities.com/Athens/8811

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