Study Abroad Program: Social Justice and NGO Activism
Bangalore, India, Summer 2011
I make a ridiculous amount of pop culture references. It's a tool of communication: an abstract, figurative commonality for things that might be difficult to define, but easy enough to emotionally comprehend. So, when presented with a classroom of individuals who have an education and vocabulary that trumps my own, I responded with the words I had-- with pop culture references that have spanned my generation and embedded themselves as common influences from the media. It's with this same sentiment that I addressed a question my instructor asked during the ten weeks of spring quarter before our study abroad, "How do you feel about my apprehension? Is going abroad a proper use of our time? Can we not be just as equally or more effective without having to travel?"
I was just as unsure. Does it really take jumping time zones to learn what we aim to or change who we are? Questions dizzied my head; there are too many factors to weigh when you don't even know what either path entails, let alone what the ultimate goal destination is. So, I utilized a methodology that I hadn't known until starting the 10+4: when you can't find an answer, then answer with an explanation of why finding and answer is so difficult. Initially, I didn't know how to measure success, but then it hit me- success doesn't mean something extravagant like starting a nonprofit or changing the world. Success is future impact-it's coming to a moment of familiarity that you can't convey with words, but instead with a memory.
My answer to the apprehension? It's worth going if the trip has an impact on us-- if someday we think back to and reference something we saw, smelled, touched or learned during the 10+4. But what's simultaneously enthralling and terrifying is the possibility that it might take a lifetime for this to happen. Like how 90's boy bands only hold deep nostalgia two decades later, what if we don't come to realize the impact of study abroad until our deathbeds? What if we go about our lives feeling like Bangalore was a cute little vacation and then only with our last lung-full of air remember how breathtakingly wonderful it was? But I was willing to take that chance, because there are things that you can't make a part of your heart without being in arms' length of its embrace.
Half a year later, my references to Bangalore have outnumbered ones to pop culture. Occasionally, a scent or sound will throw me back to my quiet host home or the crowded City Market. Many times talks about the impacts of development will stir the passion in me that was lit by the sight of Electronic City and the view of displaced people living outside their gates. My conversational tools and confidence have bloomed into a more insightful and outspoken demeanor. Exposed to so many (but still just a fraction of the world's) cruelties and injustices that I couldn't understand or change, I had to learn that through the smog and loud traffic there are wonderful moments of humanity. The world is a cruel, cruel place, but we can see beauty if we just open our eyes and stand on our heads to see it.
Bangalore has more than evolved my educational and professional paths. I feel more inclined to take on engineering as a humanitarian pursuit and to return and be a part of these organized movements, but my personal perception and goals have changed even more drastically. I see the reasoning and consequences of events from a rounder, more encompassing lens. I'm taking classes focused on engineering design and sustainability, but I'm more interested in the societal impacts and ethics rather than the logistics. With the knowledge of what development and industry can do I feel the obligation to inform other engineers to "think!" With an engineering education that tells me there's always room for improvement, and armed with a lesson from Bangalore that there's light in even the darkest places, I talk with more conviction than ever. And that is what I believe to be the greatest impact this experiential learning has given me.
I was just as unsure. Does it really take jumping time zones to learn what we aim to or change who we are? Questions dizzied my head; there are too many factors to weigh when you don't even know what either path entails, let alone what the ultimate goal destination is. So, I utilized a methodology that I hadn't known until starting the 10+4: when you can't find an answer, then answer with an explanation of why finding and answer is so difficult. Initially, I didn't know how to measure success, but then it hit me- success doesn't mean something extravagant like starting a nonprofit or changing the world. Success is future impact-it's coming to a moment of familiarity that you can't convey with words, but instead with a memory.
My answer to the apprehension? It's worth going if the trip has an impact on us-- if someday we think back to and reference something we saw, smelled, touched or learned during the 10+4. But what's simultaneously enthralling and terrifying is the possibility that it might take a lifetime for this to happen. Like how 90's boy bands only hold deep nostalgia two decades later, what if we don't come to realize the impact of study abroad until our deathbeds? What if we go about our lives feeling like Bangalore was a cute little vacation and then only with our last lung-full of air remember how breathtakingly wonderful it was? But I was willing to take that chance, because there are things that you can't make a part of your heart without being in arms' length of its embrace.
Half a year later, my references to Bangalore have outnumbered ones to pop culture. Occasionally, a scent or sound will throw me back to my quiet host home or the crowded City Market. Many times talks about the impacts of development will stir the passion in me that was lit by the sight of Electronic City and the view of displaced people living outside their gates. My conversational tools and confidence have bloomed into a more insightful and outspoken demeanor. Exposed to so many (but still just a fraction of the world's) cruelties and injustices that I couldn't understand or change, I had to learn that through the smog and loud traffic there are wonderful moments of humanity. The world is a cruel, cruel place, but we can see beauty if we just open our eyes and stand on our heads to see it.
Bangalore has more than evolved my educational and professional paths. I feel more inclined to take on engineering as a humanitarian pursuit and to return and be a part of these organized movements, but my personal perception and goals have changed even more drastically. I see the reasoning and consequences of events from a rounder, more encompassing lens. I'm taking classes focused on engineering design and sustainability, but I'm more interested in the societal impacts and ethics rather than the logistics. With the knowledge of what development and industry can do I feel the obligation to inform other engineers to "think!" With an engineering education that tells me there's always room for improvement, and armed with a lesson from Bangalore that there's light in even the darkest places, I talk with more conviction than ever. And that is what I believe to be the greatest impact this experiential learning has given me.