Jumping Into An Education Abroad by Gabrielle

Jumping Into An Education Abroad by Gabrielle - November 2017 Scholarship Essay

As I approach the spring semester of my sophomore year of college, I constantly try to further understand the world outside of my comfort zone. Reading required textbooks and essays for my general education classes, I begin to realize that this isn’t my full potential of learning. What more can I do to expand my knowledge when I only have very limited exposure to the world in which I live?
Until I was seventeen years old and almost in my senior year at Minarets Charter High School, I didn’t truly understand what I was missing. Traveling to Costa Rica in 2015 and staying there for a month among the natives, or ‘ticos’, as they refer to themselves, opened my eyes to the many opportunities that are waiting for me in other countries. Now that I am back in Fresno, California, many of my days have consisted of comparing habits of thinking among the people here and the ticos of Costa Rica. The difference is clear: Ticos are welcoming, environmentally conscious, and non-materialistic. What has surprised me, however, are the subtle differences in culture among the microenvironments in California. Minarets Charter High, located near Yosemite National Park, is outdoorsy, cooperative, and creative; San Francisco State is urban, individualistic, and socially progressive, and the suburban Clovis Community College is rather socially and politically conservative. Attending secondary school and college in three different cultures has led me to see that culture can be both finely and broadly defined, and that one’s thoughts and behaviors can be shaped by it.
Taking psychology classes at Clovis Community after taking two at San Francisco State has shown me that even the professionals who teach psychology have distinct opinions on what’s most important for their students to learn. I acknowledge that to reach my goal of helping people through different psychology strategies, I have to see the diversity of people and their minds firsthand rather than being shaped by the opinions of others.
I strongly believe that to study psychology, with plans of one day having a career in helping people through this field, I cannot, and will not, be limited to education only through textbooks or lectures. I yearn to jump into the different worlds that hold the very people I will help one day, and I know that studying abroad is the path I need to take to do so.