I don’t know why, when people hear the words “study abroad,” they automatically envision students crossing the ocean to study in some far-away country. It is only now that I realize how distorted those words really are to college students like myself. I say this because I have just returned from one of the best experiences of my life-a semester of studying abroad, only I never left the United States.
Last spring I applied for this opportunity through the National Student Exchange Program here at MSU. I chose to go up North, a region I had never visited before, just for the fall semester. Little did I know what was in store!
The first perk of the deal was that I only had to pay MSU’s tuition, so it was not like forking over the kind of dollars people really do pay to live somewhere like Boston. In addition, we didn’t even start until September so the summer lasted right up until fall and it was already cold there.
The school I attended, Westfield State College, was about an hour outside Boston and centrally located in relation to other major hot spots in the North.
There ended up being seven of us, all from across the states and one girl from Puerto Rico, on exchange to this particular school. We lived on campus and had an ongoing joke when we didn’t quite get our way: “But we’re exchange students.”
We were automatic friends from the time we set foot on campus. The first meeting we attended explained how the semester would pan out. My mom told me that she wasn’t really worried about me since it sounded like they were rolling out the red carpet for us, and that is exactly what they did. We visited a different place every weekend. Our first destination was Cape Cod, and our last was New York City. We had access to our own van, and the school paid for the gas. We made it to New York four or five times, including Thanksgiving for the Macy’s Parade. We saw the Christmas tree at Rockefeller Center and the rubble at Ground Zero. My cousin lives in downtown Manhattan and welcomed us to stay in his apartment any time, so we did.
We also ventured across the border to Montreal, Canada, where we learned some French. We rode bikes in Martha’s Vineyard and took a road trip across the state of Vermont.
We made it up to the coast of Maine and walked on the beaches of New Hampshire. We saw snow like no one from the South would believe. We made it to Fenway for Cal Ripken’s last at bat in September. The stories are innumerable!
However my point is not just to tell you about what I’ve seen and done but to explain to you that your college experience does not have to be limited to four years at MSU, not that it’s a bad place to be.
There are 171 schools across the states to choose from, and you can stay up to a year. I basically used it as a means to travel and of course to take classes pertaining to my major.
It is by far the cheapest and most enjoyable way to visit a part of our own country-besides, we’re only in college once, so why not? I learned a ton about Americans and their culture in the northern region of the country.
It was indeed “studying abroad.” So the next time you think about or hear those two words, know that you can cross that Mississippi state line and learn a whole lot about yourself and others without even flying half way around the world.