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宝博体育 对任何一个大学生来说都是一次了不起的经历吗.
It involves uprooting your everyday life at your home institution to embark on a revealing, 文化震撼之旅. With many adjustments to make and customs to get used to, 留学是一件非常个人化的事情, 具有挑战性的经验, and it comes with its own different set of hurdles for a first-generation college student.
I’m a first-generation college student studying early childhood and elementary education with a minor in foreign languages (Spanish and French) at Champlain College in Burlington, 佛蒙特州. I had tremendous support from my parents in the process of 应用 to this school and going through the steps of enrolling, 但不像我的许多高中同学, I didn’t get much advice from my parents during the months leading up to decision day. 确定, they were able to support my decisions and agreed to tour Champlain with me, but they couldn’t provide specific knowledge that someone who had graduated from college could. They didn’t have any alumni connections or university contacts. They didn’t know which schools I should turn to based on what I wanted to study. 因为缺乏建议, 我做了很多搜索, 规划, 应用, 决定, 而且是我自己的承诺. This reality of not really knowing where to start transferred over to study abroad, and it made me fearful that I wouldn’t be able to fulfill my dreams.
As my sophomore year of college was ending and junior year was approaching, 我知道我想宝博体育. I went to study abroad workshops at my school, and I knew right away that I wanted to 西班牙留学,特别是 格拉纳达. Once I was certain in my heart that I wanted to embark on the process of studying abroad through CEA in 格拉纳达, 是时候在我的公寓里坐下了, 打电话给我的家人, 告诉他们我的计划.
这通电话并不完全如我所愿。
When I called my family and told them about my intentions to study abroad, 我妈妈一开始很惊讶, and she was generally against the idea of me going abroad. 她害怕我的改变, likely because she has never been to Europe before and didn’t know what to expect, 因此, 她不想让我这么做. 虽然在这次谈话之后我感到气馁, 我继续往前走, and I hustled every single day to show my family that I could go abroad, 我要走了, 无论如何.
好几个月, I worked on filling out the CEA application after being accepted, 申请了多个奖学金, 拿到签证了, 我见了我家乡学校的顾问, 制定了我申请宝博体育的经济援助, 最后敲定了前往格拉纳达的旅行计划. I persisted through the doubts that were circling around me, through the guilt that I felt for doing something that was different and nontraditional for my family. 在这个折磨人的过程结束后, after having to truly manifest my independence and advocate for myself, 我已经准备好独自去格拉纳达了. During the last week of January, I said a heartfelt “goodbye” to my mom, dad, and sister at John F. Kennedy Airport in New York City with an immense sense of pride.
我很自豪来到格拉纳达, 西班牙, studying the Spanish language in a way I never have before. I am proud to be the only student from my home institution studying in 格拉纳达, as well as the first Champlain student to ever venture to 格拉纳达 for study abroad. I am proud to represent my family here in 西班牙 through my study of Spanish, something I only ever dreamed of until a few weeks ago when my dreams became real.
Being a first-generation college student has equipped me with such a strong sense of fulfillment, 无论是个人还是学术. With the added experience of being able to study abroad, my confidence in my abilities to pursue my passions and indulge in my desires is through the roof. I am so proud to be studying abroad as a first-generation college student, and it’s a feeling I can’t even really put into words. I can’t wait to make the most of my time in 西班牙 and return to 佛蒙特州 as an example for students who may be afraid to do what I did. What has once been considered impossible for me is now my reality, and I can only hope that other first-generation college students can achieve what I was able to.
安吉拉·理查德 2020年夏季CEA MOJO博客在塞维利亚吗, 西班牙, 目前在尚普兰学院学习.
