My Study Abroad Experience

A life-altering experience is one that changes you, prompts intellectual new ways of thinking, and broadens global understanding which is exactly what study abroad did for me. Between May and June, I studied abroad in a program specifically designed for my major titled: Global Perspectives in Neuroscience and Medicine. Before fully discussing what I experienced and learned, I think it is of high importance to shout out all the people who brought this program to life. Dr. Philips, one of our neuroscience professors, designed this program on her own and she does all the behind-the-scenes work as well. She is the brains and the wheels behind this operation. But what is even more special about this program is we also have the opportunity to learn clinical knowledge from a retired neurosurgeon, Dr. Simonds, as well as learn from Dr. Sontheimer who founded the School of Neuroscience at Virginia Tech and now runs a research lab at UVA studying a variety of topics, one being glioblastomas. Now I want to share what exactly we learned from these three amazing individuals as well as what I learned about myself along the way.  

We kicked our program off in Amsterdam, Netherlands. The weather was rainy and cold but nonetheless the memories were wonderful. As a part of our program, we had the opportunity to visit a place called the Hogeweyk also known as the dementia village in Weesp, Netherlands. The concept is that end of life dementia patients are given autonomy, in a facility where they can have their best quality of life. This is accomplished by them having their own grocery store, hair salon, different clubs, their own restaurant, and even homes that reflect their livelihood growing up. It’s truly incredible and inspiring and not something I’ve ever seen before. Outside of academics, my favorite memory was a canal cruise where we rented our own boat to navigate down the canals. 

We then transitioned to Belgium, where we visited a place called OPZ. This facility is located in Geel which houses a psychiatric family foster care model. This facility showed us different outlooks on psychiatric disorders and how a community centered approach can support people with disorders. Belgium was also very special to me since it was on the top of the list of places I saw. Ghent was a medieval town with beautiful castles and cathedrals that made your jaw drop, it was also where I had a Belgium waffle. 

Then our group traveled by plane and train to Riva San Vitale, Switzerland, where the Steger Center is located. Here we began classroom academics but what is so unique about this program is that we are not being lectured in a typical fashion. We may have an hour or two of lectures but then we collaborate and piece together information on neurological diseases whether that be on paper or in other forms of creativity. Additionally, we dove into groundbreaking literature and created presentations within 2 hours and delivered and taught our peers exactly what we learned, some being forms of storytelling and some being strictly informational. Over the course of 10 academic days total in class from 9am-6pm, we covered 7 diseases and learned had other days of global perspectives on disease. We learned about strokes, Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI), Epilepsy, Multiple Sclerosis, Alzheimer’s, Schizophrenia, and Parkinson’s. Additionally, we had global perspective days on mental health, risk factors of certain diseases, and more. Our program concluded with a comprehensive, complex exam that required connecting various diseases and walking through pathways, physiology, and mechanisms. Once we returned home, we also wrote a research paper in relation to anything we learned about to further expand our knowledge.  

Outside of the program, there was still time to play. I was able to see Milan, Florence, and Positano, Italy, in addition to Lucerne, Switzerland. There was great food eaten, great sights seen, boat rides, and a whole lot of sunshine.  

At the end of the day, it’s not the big things that shaped me but the small things, such as taking a train, or walking to their grocery store, or learning their trash habits, or becoming engaged in the way a culture shares a meal. While taking classes and learning how to navigate these small things, you begin to compare the way you’re used to living to the way you’re now living, and you miss certain things and other things you don’t miss at all. And I think what is so special is you learn how to live in an entirely different way, and by the end you feel like a natural. You feel like you’ve found a new piece of yourself that you never knew existed. By the end, it is bittersweet, and you can’t believe you just did that. It’s hard to explain this to anyone else because until you’ve experienced it for yourself, the feeling is not one you can even fantasize.   

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