Pitzer After Going Abroad

One of Pitzer College’s five core values is Intercultural Understanding.  Approximately 75 percent of students will study abroad at least once throughout their time at Pitzer.   Last spring I studied abroad in, Seville, Spain, where I attended the University of Seville.  As one may Imagine, I was filled with a cornucopia of emotions.  I was excited for a new adventure, sad to leave my life at Pitzer and nervous for all the new situations I would encounter.  No matter how much I thought about what my experience would be like, I was never close to predicting what my experience actually was like.

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I would love to summarize my entire six months abroad in one paragraph but unfortunately that is impossible.  I do not believe there is an accurate way to depict immersion into another culture without doing so.  What I can say I learned is a whole lot about cultural relativity, even from my friends who are from the United States.  Everyday I encountered something I had never experienced before.  I found that once my mind had been stretched by an experience that it could not shrink back to the size it was before.  I went abroad with a mind that was shaped different than the mind I came back with, and applied that new way of thinking my experience within my daily life and time at Pitzer College.   Going abroad has taught me to learn from each experience that arises in my life.


Posted by Abby Barnstone ’15, Psychology

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