I often look back to my time of study abroad in Berlin, Germany with very dear memories – the friendships I made that I still cherish; the travels in Germany and Europe that richly expanded my cultural sensitivities, and above all, the advancements in my German skills and in my knowledge of German culture that would fundamentally benefit my future graduate studies in piano and musicology.
During my time in Berlin, although our program was officially affiliated with the Freie Universität, where I took a number of humanitarian courses in philosophy, theology and German philology, I was lucky to take advantage of the densely networked higher education system in Berlin and took music theory classes on Schubert and Brahms at Humboldt-Universität, another major university in Berlin. Carmen and Niko at the BCGS were very helpful and unbureaucratic in managing the transfer of grades across the institutions. The broad spectrum of areas that I had to immerse into reflected the guidance of my home university (University of Notre Dame) that highly prizes a well-rounded liberal art undergraduate experience, while all the academic work was done in an abroad setting among local student peers and faculty that provoked a freshly different approach to my lifestyle, academic habits and cultural thinking in that particular junior year.
Yes, I did miss life at Notre Dame a lot that year, but my time in Germany paid off well in countless ways – just to name a few aspects outside of the classroom, the cultural scene in Berlin, with its Philharmonie, opera houses, art museums and historical sites, is superb and endlessly exciting; my cultural interests would also lead me to visit other German and European cities such as Weimar, Hamburg, Lübeck, Copenhagen, etc. with the ease and affordability of railway transportation in Europe; I also found a way to connect with nature as I was in Berlin – inspired by my favorite poet Eichendorff, I liked to take long walks and exercise in the forest Grunewald that I lived nearby.
I believe that, as we move forward in our lives, different “stations” in our paths – where we lived, worked, studied etc. – would become locations of “home” (in German “Wahlheimat”) that influence and shape our views and personhood throughout our lives; we belong to those places in unique ways and they become “part of us” as well. For me, apart from the obvious benefits of study abroad for my music studies, my cultural immersion in Berlin/Germany reached deep into my identity and will keep inform my life paths in ways I may or may not be conscious of. However, one thing is for sure: the time of study abroad has expanded the dimensions of my student life and made me a much more mature and global citizen in almost every way during that important year of personal growth.
