"That sense of identity showed up everywhere: in the people I met, in the food I ate, and in the classes I took."
Starting my summer in Paris for the English Track and ending it in Berlin for the Intensive German course let me experience a way of life completely different from what I know. I was born and raised on Maui, so even moving to New York for college was a culture shock. I expected nine weeks in Europe to be an even bigger leap, but instead I found that Paris and Berlin felt like a kind of halfway point between New York and Hawaiʻi. Still very busy, but with a slower pace and rooted sense of community and identity that reminded me of home.
That sense of identity showed up everywhere: in the people I met, in the food I ate, and in the classes I took. In Paris, I took Art Humanities and a Global Core course on North African migration in France, which gave me a much richer way to understand the city than I would have gotten just walking through it as a tourist. In Berlin, taking intensive German pushed me in a different way. Being forced to actually speak the language opened doors. I got to know native Berliners, practice conversations I would have been too nervous to attempt otherwise, and pick up pieces of history and daily life that don’t come through in a textbook.
None of this would have been possible without the Global Learning Scholarship. The funding let me do both programs back to back, rather than choosing just one, and gave me a summer I'll draw on for years academically, personally, and in how I think about my future.
