So maybe you got rejected from that Spanish FSP, or have already used up all your transfer credits with that exchange at UCSD. You're not quite sure that an internship in New York City is quite up your alley, and living with the parents at home would be just uncomfortable. So you join the leagues of Dartmouth students who choose to spend their off-term volunteering their time in a foreign country! Congratulations, you're in good company.
I set off to discover the general experiences and the over-arching themes of students' time studying abroad, and came back with stories of disorganized programs, odd cultural exchanges (including goats, chickens, and wild boars) and difficulty in understanding local customs, but also a lot of profound change and appreciation.
During her time in India, Sheli Chabon '10 encountered a different issue every day. "You don't expect it all and you can't explain," she said. "Something will happen, and you just have no idea how this could possibly have happened. To understand these things you have to think in a whole new cultural system."
The need to adjust to a new cultural landscape is expected in any abroad experience, but many students spoke of a bigger change coming back to campus than arriving in their country of choice.
"Everybody prepares you so much ... you spend a lot of time thinking about going there, but you don't spend time thinking about the shock of going home," explained Sarah Isbey '08. She said that upon first arriving back in Hanover from Ghana, it was "really hard to deal with the excess" of our lives in the United States, but she soon realized that "feeling guilty doesn't get you anywhere; it doesn't do anything good."
After returning from volunteering at a school in India, Chabon said that "after living for two months out of my backpack, never looking in the mirror, never caring about what I looked like," the adjustment back to Hanover was eye-opening.
In India, she explained, "you're surrounded by poverty all the time ... it made you realize the extent of inequality in the world." Sheli said this was especially emphasized by the fact that she was working in a village a few hours outside of Bangalore, the 'Silicon Valley of India,' one of the most modern and wealthy cities on the subcontinent.
When she moved back up to Hanover, with her car packed to the brim with the contents of her dorm room, Sheli said she realized that "all this junk was more than the 52 students at the school had combined. It made me realize that I don't need all the things I think I need to make me happy."
She added, "I'm so happy to be back, though. It made me realize how amazing our education system here is; we're given such freedom, we're pushed to think outside the box, not just to memorize."
Kayla Eisman '09, who spent over six months in Russia and (affectionately) calls it "a ridiculous place," said that "life was more simple there." She described having enough free time to cook elaborate dinners every day, and to pursue hobbies like painting and reading more often.
She summed it up by saying, "Russia's definitely a different place to live than America," but that "one of the worst things was the food," saying that it was so bad that she couldn't eat much and "lost a ton of weight."
Noah Dentzel '10 (right) also found that food was a defining aspect of his time abroad, in his case in a rural Kenyan village. Noah went with five other Dartmouth students through the Humanitarian Engineering Leadership Project, an interdisciplinary campus group. Noah explained: "We were eating about one meal a day, and it's funny how we just totally adapted." Back on campus, he pointed out, "we eat three or four times a day," but "once you get away from that for even a week your body adjusts and your cravings change -- your hunger adjusts, your metabolism adjusts."
Noah and the rest of his group were working to install a water distribution system, but "our main goal was to get the people to understand how to upkeep the system and keep it sustainable." This created a need for teamwork with the community, but, Noah explained, "We had very different conceptions about things, and they would even tell us that in conversations: they would say, 'That's just not how we do things.' There's just kind of a clash of cultural approach."
Additionally, Noah described how "from an outsider's perspective, it didn't seem to be too egalitarian between the sexes; the women definitely bore the brunt of the work. The women were always working, always getting water, doing everything." On a typical day, he said, "The men just hang out and the women do all the work. These are stereotypes but it's something we really saw."
He described an "incredible amount of development issues" including widespread domestic violence, corruption and polygamy, and added that, "I feel like all the problems that you hear about Africa, at the country level, is seen in this small village of 2,000 people."
But Noah added, "In the end of the day, the project worked out really well ... and every roadblock we encountered was a learning experience."
Trey Roy '09 went to Santiago, Chile on a Tucker Fellowship, but said his arrival was not unexpected. "My contact had left the organization so no one knew I was even coming. Everyone I contacted would either not respond or refer me to others."
Several people reflected this same experience, but Trey added, "After the initial issues I didn't have any huge problems ... all the other [community service organizations] I came into contact with weren't any more organized."
Trey had initially planned to build homes but ended up spending most of his time at a day care center for children at social risk, where he said, "Most of the children's only experience with adult males was through their dads being violent towards them or others ... and eventually leaving or being forced to leave. I feel that in the least I showed them that not all adult males were violent or untrustworthy."
Coming back to Hanover, Trey realized, "When I was there I had so little to worry about myself that I was much more aware about others. It was an experience that we at Dartmouth don't have that much. Everything is so fast paced and we are always thinking about our next meeting, paper, problem set, practice or whatever. It let me see another side of the world and also remind me to chill out every once in awhile."
Trey also described one of the more memorable parts of his trip as his "name issues": "No one could say Trey. I would tell them my name and they would either be like 'Oh, like Troy Bolton from High School Musical' or 'Shrek? Like the friend of the donkey?"
In the end, "I don't think it's an experience that's for everybody; you have to be open-minded, and it's not something to just slap on your resum," said Sarah Isbey '08. "You have to have it in you ... There's plenty of other ways to help people; you don't have to be in a remote country."
Jocelyn is a staff writer for The Mirror.
