"Completing the program and co-authoring a manuscript for a professional academic publication is an achievement that I’m confident will positively influence my academic career and beyond."
This summer I was thrown headfirst into an international whirlwind that has left an unequivocal impression on my academic career. To provide context, this summer experience abroad was my second one. Last summer, I participated in the Columbia Summer Core in Paris: Art Humanities and Music Humanities program and immediately fell in love with the European summer. I finished that summer program feeling enriched culturally, personally, and intellectually, and I immediately knew that it couldn’t be the last time that I experienced something like that. So I made sure it wasn’t.
The majority of my summer was spent eagerly waiting for my trip to Cambridge, U.K., where I would immerse myself in a new culture using the lessons I had learned from the previous year. As it turns out, I didn’t have to wait long to get started as the tasks started rolling in before I ever stepped foot on a plane. I participated in the Columbia Summer Research Practicum in the Global Behavioral Science Program (GLOBES), in which we undertook a hefty international research project investigating the heterogeneity of attitudes towards social media regulation across the world. The program timeline of two and a half weeks and the size of the research project seemed fundamentally incompatible, but I quickly found that the guidance available to us and the work ethic of our cohort would ensure our success.
It was stimulating to follow the research process from hypothesis to data collection to writing a manuscript to submission for publication. As a Cognitive Science major used to reading academic research papers, it was great to be on the other side of the process. Completing the program and co-authoring a manuscript for a professional academic publication is an achievement that I’m confident will positively influence my academic career and beyond.
Moreover, it was great to be working alongside a group that was so internationally diverse. We got to exchange ideas, stories, and experiences in and out of the classroom with the backdrop of Cambridge to complement our time together. I am incredibly grateful for the opportunity to have experienced a city packed with history and so deeply significant to academia.
I’m leaving Cambridge feeling smarter, fulfilled, and optimistic about what my next study abroad experience will hold.
