This post is going to be a little different than the previous three, in which I recounted all the things I was doing during the month or so now that I have been in this country.  Now, however I would like to spill what’s on my mind concerning studying abroad in general.

First off, this is my first time studying abroad in another country.  Which means that coming into this, I had a well-defined set of beliefs and ideas about what this experience was going to be like before I got here, none of which were based on a past experience.  My ideas about study abroad were influenced largely by my Lewis & Clark friend’s and how they related their experiences, what my professors said the DR was going to be like, and what I had gathered from traveling in Central America for a month.

The amazingly funny and painfully truthful blog “Stuff White People Like” lists “Study Abroad” as #72 in the long list of things that characterize a young white urban liberal’s existence.  And coming from a largely white college where 60% of the undergrad students study abroad at some point in their college careers, I knew that coming into this I was not attempting anything unique in the least.  Encouragingly, half of the American students in my study abroad group label themselves as something other than white, although I will venture a guess that statistically study abroad in general is primarily a upper-middle class white experience.  Regardless, study abroad is, on the surface, a chance to experience another culture, maybe learn another language; underneath it is seen as your chance to party and go crazy.

There are two sides then to the large silver coin that is the study abroad experience.  One side is a sincere desire to experience and learn from another culture, to widen one’s own perspective and worldview.  This side might even see studying abroad as a chance to use one’s skills for the betterment of a developing nation, to do a little work fighting poverty or hunger or homelessness.  At the very least it is a sincere desire to study in a different setting with new challenges, a chance to build one’s own character and to test one’s own moral fiber.

The other side of the coin can be summed up by the title of a great Onion News article: Semester Abroad Spent Drinking with Other American Students.  Especially in a country such as the DR, where beach/resort tourism abounds and the drinking age is 18, it is hard not to be swept up in that euphoria.  Being in a foreign country, away from your regular friends, far away from family, away from your home institution, gives you the sense that you can do whatever you want: your actions seem to be without consequences, and even the consequences adhere to a convenient rule of What Happens in Vegas Stays in Vegas.

Here then, is a short list of the things I’ve learned so far during my short stay in the DR:

1. First off, it is important to step back and think, why am I doing this?  Simply questioning your own motives and talking about what it means to study abroad is a great first step.
2. Studying abroad is in and of itself a seemingly “simulated” or “fake” experience.  You are living in a foreign country, but with an assistance network behind you that no new immigrant has.  You have a family, but they are not actually your family, just for the next for months.
3. Its OK to hang out with Americans.  Its OK to speak English.  At the beginning of the trip, I found myself often not wanting to hang out with my fellow American students, wanting only to speak Spanish.   But then I realized that connecting with these people was just as much an eye-opening and learning experience as connecting with Dominicans.  Besides, wanting to only hang out with Dominicans and only speak Spanish is perpetuating the false idea that you are actually assimilating into some kind of Dominican identity for 4 months.  Just think, if you were a Polish immigrant coming to Chicago, you would want to connect with the people who you could communicate and relate to the most:  other people who spoke Polish and were culturally like you.  There’s nothing wrong in wanting to connect with people like you while you are abroad or anyplace else.
4. If you are coming to study abroad in a developing nation and looking to “help” in any sort of way, make sure you take a step back first and question your motives.  Read Ivan Illich’s speech To Hell with Good Intentions.  Remember that an under-skilled college student is not exactly the type of person to solve that nation’s problems.

Well, those are my thoughts and feelings so far; they will most likely change as February turns into March, March into April, and April into May.  Let me know what you think in the comments.  ¡Que tengan buen fin de semana!

Love,
Jonah