Being Well Rounded
Did you ever want to be more interesting? To have better stories to tell? Better comments to add to conversations? Better ways to impress your friends?
It’s human nature to desire these skills. It’s also widely understood that you will start developing them when you attend college. But as you start planning your next few years of education, consider that there is perhaps no better way to become a more well-rounded, interesting individual than by attending college in a foreign country.
- Meet entirely new types of people and visit world-famous landmarks as you learn new customs and attitudes
- Learn from a culturally diverse group of professors that teach things completely differently from any instructor you’ve ever had
- Be proud of your own changes and accomplishments
See the World
Become an explorer. Visit famous landmarks. Take great pictures. Make all your friends jealous.
Just about everyone will get fun stories in college. There are always tales of late-night searches for food, awful Coke/coffee combinations in an effort to pull an all-nighter, silly dorm mates doing something wacky and wild and nuts. No matter where you decide to go to school, you are bound to have great stories to tell. But don’t you want more? Don’t you want something even greater?
You can still gather stories like that by attending college abroad, but you also get the amazing tales that come with living in another country: you’ll be able to see famous sites, meet all new types of people, blend into a totally new culture and much more. If you really want great stories to tell, you want great experiences like these.
Additionally, one of the most interesting aspects of college is the opportunity to meet a whole new group of people, many of whom may be from different parts of the country, and can therefore offer you different points of view. Imagine going to college abroad and meeting people from different parts of the world. That will truly give you a different point of view, and will help mold you into a well-traveled, culturally diverse person anyone could enjoy talking to.
How many people do you know who have friends from all over the world? You can become that person with the global network.
Make Learning Fun
You may not have liked class in high school, and that’s okay. Typically, college is when students really start to enjoy learning. The environment is completely different, the teaching style is new (less memorization of hard facts and more classroom discussion) and the students start to mature and start to enjoy what they are doing as they begin to narrow their focus on a particular field of study.
College abroad takes this a step further. If you go to college in a foreign country, you aren’t just learning from new types of teachers, you are learning in an entirely different cultural environment. You’ve already gone through twelve years of US education, isn’t it time to try something new? If you combine all that previous learning with what you will learn abroad (both academically and just by the sheer fact of interacting in this different society), you will truly blossom into a fascinating and multi-faceted person capable of impressing all of your friends, and anyone else you happen to come into contact with, for that matter.
Impress Yourself
College abroad will no doubt impress your friends, and that is reason enough to experience this terrific adventure, but there’s another reason to consider attending college in a foreign country: you will enjoy the new you.
When you become introduced to this different culture, you will start to see things differently, and you will begin to gain entirely new interests. You’ll start enjoying different types of foods and you’ll develop new tastes for beers and wines. You’ll get pleasure out of new types of films and books, and you’ll see things in your old favorites that you never realized before. You’ll enjoy different qualities in people than you did previously, and will seek out new groups of friends with new traits.
And best of all, you’ll enjoy these changes. You’ll like having a new group of friends with new interests different from your old buddies. You’ll enjoy getting more out of art by seeing the international perspective. You’ll be happy with your enhanced palette and your newfound openness to all sorts of stunning flavors. You’ll relish the fact that you are an improved version of your former self (not that there was anything wrong with you before!).
These are just a few examples. There are countless others ways that you will change. And when these changes occur, you won’t just impress others around you, you will impress yourself.
In Conclusion
It’s human nature to want to be the life of the party, to have interesting anecdotes to add to conversations and fun stories to delight those around you. Everybody wants to achieve that, but not everyone realizes how to do it.
Going to college abroad opens you up to an entirely new world to explore. By living in a different country, interacting with different people, learning from new types of teachers, eating new types of food, visiting famous landmarks and more, you are exposing yourself to an unlimited source of great stories, and you are transforming yourself into that interesting, well-rounded person you always knew you could be. If you really want to impress your friends, you want to attend college abroad.
After all, think about how cool it will be when they come to visit for a weekend.
