When applying to colleges, I started my search with a variety of different institutions: large universities, city colleges and liberal arts schools. As I started the process of eliminating various choices, I noticed that the liberal arts schools were the ones that I didn’t get rid of. I saw a trend in the type of school I wanted and how they all focused on helping students become well-rounded. I knew I wanted a school that would challenge me and my ideals, and force me to look beyond myself.

Starting at Dickinson I took the normal first year classes, and right off the bat was thinking about situations I had never studied before. My psychology class asked me to think about other countries and how different languages and communication helped or hindered interactions with the greater world. I suddenly had to form new opinions and still have them be challenged by my professors and peers.

Then sophomore year came around and I had to decide where I wanted to study abroad. I quickly settled on a Spanish speaking country, and soon after on Spain since it would help my language development and allow me to explore the world.

What did I expect from my experiences abroad? Well, I expected to be terrified, to try a million new things and to hopefully better my ability to speak Spanish. I can successfully say that all three occurred. I think, however, that while it was terrifying at first, it was one of the greatest experiences I have had, and I truly grew as a person. I now see the importance of what Dickinson aims to do by expanding our ideas about the world and getting us to focus on more than just ourselves in teeny, tiny Carlisle.

I think that the chance to study abroad is one of the greatest opportunities that Dickinson affords us, and I think it is partially due to Dickinson being a liberal arts school. Dickinson encourages students to travel and take classes in a foreign country; but even more than that, it challenges us to expand our horizons. Those students that go to different parts of the world are forced to speak a different language, or work with people that they had never imagined working with.

While abroad, I had the chance to live with a host family, learn about what is important to them and their culture and I was able to learn about people who might be less fortunate than I. We took a class trip to Morocco and saw the beauty of the country as well as the poverty. While some people clearly had money and were doing well, there were others who would try to sell little crafts to us for small change to make what they could. In Paris I saw the splendor and the architecture, but I also found time to talk to people who spoke English or Spanish and find out what they felt about the relationships in the world.

I think that my semester exploring Europe afforded me the chance to focus on something larger than I had experienced before. While I had traveled many times in the past, this was a longer time spent in one place and with one family. I watched the news with them and got to hear perspectives on what we saw that were different than I would have predicted. I expected my host mother to want to help the refugees from Syria and what I heard was the opposite. While she saw that they needed help, she didn’t think that Spain had the resources to help others since there are many that need help first. I believe that while people expect to learn one thing from others when they talk to them they hear completely different opinions.

I would challenge anyone who believes that liberal arts schools don’t teach as much or aren’t as good as larger institutions to think again. This is a comment I have heard from friends from high school and I think they couldn’t be further from the truth. Liberal arts educations challenge people to think and to explore who they are as a person. And so many liberal arts schools today afford students the opportunity that I had: the chance to travel and live in another country. And that was one of the greatest gifts I could have gotten. It has truly expanded my horizons and helped me grow as a person. As I finish my final year at Dickinson next year and prepare to enter the real world, I will remember the lessons I learned in Spain and how they changed me and challenged me for the better.