It’s a sunday afternoon and I am studying furiously, not uncommon for a college student right? However, considering I am wearing a bathing suit, sitting on a boat, and that I am studying from the “PADI Open Water SCUBADiver Course” book alongside my “Politics of Developing Areas” textbook, some might be confused.
Let me start from the beginning. I just turned 19 years old and am in the middle of my fourth semester of college as an international affairs major.
My first summer was spent in Tianjin, China, followed by a fall and spring in Florence, Italy, and ending this summer in Panama City, Panama. This doesn’t include all the weekend trips, layovers and stops along the way in countries like Morocco, Northern Ireland, Poland, Palestine, and Turkey.
Undoubtedly, some of you will peg me as just another “rich kid” and others will tell me that in reality i’ll have to get a 9 to 5 job someday. That’s why I would like to explain what I am doing before posting specifics about my travels.
Like most other high schoolers, I put up with varsity sports and AP tests, hoping to get into one of the nations expensive private universities that would promise me a job to earn enough money to travel, retire etc. One day as I applied to a school as a “classical archaeology” major my concerned and confused mother asked me what I liked to do most. After hearing my response that I loved all the times I traveled and the camps abroad I went to, she sent me a link to something called the First Year Abroad program.
This program is unique because it lets freshman study abroad their first semester, something few other colleges offer. The idea behind it is that if you send freshman abroad they will learn so much and be exposed to new ideas that they will be less likely to spend their time partying and failing classes.
The deal - no catch here - is that if you study abroad for the fall, spring and summer, for $45,000 (the average price of a private school for only the fall and spring), then for the rest of your college degree you get in-state tuition. In-state tuition in Florida is funded by the lottery so is basically free ($3,000) to us Northerners where in-state tuition is around $30,000, and financial aid is based on our parents salaries, making us unqualified for even a small scholarship. Combined with the fact that I was allowed to enter college with 45 credits through testing, meaning that I will graduate this spring, at the age of 19, this deal is unbelievable.
In the end I will pay around $55,000 for a degree in just 6 semesters of college, 4 spent abroad, and one outstanding global education. Compare that to $200,000 in debt and five years at private school. As for my reasoning for wanting a global education, well just watch this video or check out this site.
I was even lucky enough to get a job at the libraries in Florence and Panama to help me pay for things like surfing in Northern Africa, a spontaneous trip to Barcelona via Ryanair, and even a SCUBA certification!
I also can’t imagine how much it would cost just to rent a room at the beautiful apartment we stayed in near to Ponte Vecchio for 9 months, we even had “meal tickets” included that we could use at a variety of hand picked restaurants by our program coordinator for delicious pasta dinners every night and panini lunches, but more about that to come...
#StudyAbroadBecause
Kimberly Jachimek is the Global Learning in College Editor for Wandering Educators