"I came home with a lot of specific memories, but what I remember most is the feeling of having an ordinary life somewhere completely different for a few months."
That ordinary part of the experience was probably my favorite. I liked having the freedom to leave my apartment and just walk, sometimes with somewhere to go and sometimes without. I got used to doing small things in a city that had initially felt very unfamiliar: buying groceries, figuring out the Metro, finding somewhere to sit for an hour, taking a longer route home because I felt like it, all the time speaking French as much as possible. There were also plenty of moments when I felt completely out of place or realized I had misunderstood something, but those became part of the experience too. After a while, Paris felt less like a place I was visiting and more like a place I happened to be living in for the summer.
The Global Learning Scholarship made it possible for me to have that experience without the financial cost of studying abroad being the deciding factor. I’m especially grateful for that because the value of the summer wasn’t really in any single class, trip, or landmark. It was having the time and freedom to settle into a place and experience it at a much slower pace than I normally would.
I came home with a lot of specific memories, but what I remember most is the feeling of having an ordinary life somewhere completely different for a few months.
