Experiencing the World: equal opportunity by Beatriz

Experiencing the World: equal opportunity by Beatriz - March 2016 Scholarship Essay

Learning a language tends to be a feared treasure in which most people are afraid to dive in. This is not something that should be blamed on the individual as he/she has only been exposed to it in the wrong way and sometimes the opportunity is too far out of reach financially or educationally.

Traveling to another country can be useful for someone to picture the way other countries look, get a feel of how culturally different people are, and perhaps have a glance at the natives customs and traditions. However, to surpass the barriers of knowledge in a country, it is important to merge, even “soak”, in the lieu of interest. Immersing one’s self in the foreign country is, not only a unique experience but a necessary one to get deep into the roots, become fluent, create ties by building ties with natives, eating their food, shopping at local grocery stores, and learning their history. As a young teenager having difficulty learning languages conventionally between walls, I sporadically decided to change my life’s course and immersed myself in the U.S. with an unknown host-family. I became fluent, built long-lasting relationships, and “experienced” the American culture in the deep lands of the south. In other words, learning “interactively”, not only from the book, and experiencing history in native sites and museums is the most effective way to learn, retain, and fully appreciate. Because there is much to experience in a country, studying abroad should be required.
When traveling abroad, it is recommendable to do it alone. Starting university, I studied abroad in France; a group of American students also travelled along. We all had the opportunity to immerse ourselves and study with the natives with the finality of becoming fluent. With determination, I forced myself to spend my days with the native crowd, while the Americans unwisely decided to keep each other company. After a semester, I had become fluent in French but the Americans went back not being able to have a simple conversation; making it essential to travel alone.For me, traveling to the U.S. alone is what made the difference, as I had to trust and decide for myself. It also allows the individual to be around people with different backgrounds, stories, and hardships and build strong ties with them. Both experiences had taken great efforts and energy out me, it was difficult to build relationships from scratch with people I did not understand. At first, I was not able to get deeply involved in a conversation, but I was able to adapt and start gaining mastery of the language with the final result of becoming fluent and connecting with incredible people. I changed the life I led by opening my mind and being exposed to new things such as other people's’ ways of life and how it differed from mine, as well as the importance of not taking everything for granted. As it can be observed, there are many life lessons to be learned from this life-changing experience; which is why studying abroad should be required.
Psychologists have concluded that people are afraid of change, prefer to avoid unknown situations and like to stay conventional. It was not a comfortable, or easy decision for me to make either. Truthfully, going to France was not by choice for me, nor I was truly passionate about living in the coldness of the north, however I became fluent, met the love of my life, and truly developed my perspective and way of thinking. Therefore, because knowing other languages has much to offer; and because many students will most likely decide not to do it, studying abroad should be required.
Also, nowadays most well paying careers are those in companies that expatriate employees, hence, it is essential to speak languages and to be ready to adapt to cultural different situations. Making the opportunity to study abroad only reachable for those with the means to afford it would increase inequality in terms of education, career success, cultural enrichment and personal development by leaving behind students that suffer economically. Hence, since one argument against studying abroad is the price, a way needs to be found in order to allow every students, whose families suffer from economic distress and, in many cases, social hardship, to travel to other countries. One of my schools that organized an expensive trip to Malaysia and gave us the opportunity to fundraise with activities such as selling pastries at school. This idea to implement fundraising programs for all students and ultimately ease the economic burden could be great solution to create equal opportunity; and TO make studying abroad a requirement.

Overall, every student should experience studying abroad. Not only is it essential to become fluent, but also to learned about the history, culture, traditions and opening one’s mind to accomplish great things. If students that cannot afford this are deprived from immersing in another country, and the ones that can afford it do, it will create a greater social division and inequality. Therefore, being an exchange student should be mandatory because it has many advantages to offer and students will rarely decide to do it. To do this, a way to teach student to raise funds and ease the economic burden that traveling abroad imposes should be found. I would personally recommend anyone to study abroad and to be immersed in a different reality.