Reflecting on the Journey
"I wasn’t just studying the 2017 French presidential election in a class, I was living through it; my professor wrote for one of the leading French journals and took our class to various political rallies. At the time, I was living with a very engaged host family who always discussed current events over dinner."
Kaitlin Hickey CC'18
Reflecting on global awareness
"In a world that continues to globalize at an unprecedented rate, learning about other cultures is a necessary and responsible thing to do. But to choose an area of intensive study, such as Japanese art history or English literature, in a culture so far removed from your own — where exactly does the exigency to engage so deeply come from? A choice of major goes beyond cultural awareness; it’s the potential dedication of a career and a life to a single subject."
Trevor Menders CC'18
Reflecting on global awareness
"Through Columbia’s Department of Latin American and Iberian Cultures, I learned much more than a language. The Hispanic Cultures I and II classes introduced me to the joys of reading Jorge Luis Borges in the original Spanish and listening to Iberian punk music. Thanks to these courses, I started to see language not as an end in itself, but as a window into understanding and engaging with other cultures. By the time I left to study abroad in Buenos Aires during the fall of my junior year, the College had prepared me to use my Spanish language skills to really dig into Argentine culture."
Anjelica Neslin CC'16
Reflecting on global awareness
"My decision to study abroad was a long, arduous one, but I needed to leave Columbia to become intimate with an entirely different mode of learning, experiencing and being. I chose Mongolia because I thought of it as a nowhere land; my image of the country was like that of a grey, static-filled TV screen. After returning from Mongolia, I started working on a map project I had put off for a long time. I thought of the process of mapmaking — making personal, hand-illustrated maps — as a way of approaching the unfamiliar. Once I’ve left a place, the maps are reminders of faraway worlds and different ways of being, a snapshot of myself in time and space."
Kening Zhu CC'14