Tag Archives: study abroad

April In Paris

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The sun just set. You are newly arrived to one of the most magical cities in the world. Armed with a warm baguette in one hand and too much cheese in the other, you are wandering down a charming alleyway. As your feet glide over the uneven cobble stone streets, you see the glittering of the Eiffel Tower shining through the Art Nouveau inspired rooftops of the many Parisian apartment buildings nearby. As you look up in a fit of incredibility, you forget all your worries, including the fact that you feel lost in more ways than one and you begin to melt into the very street you were once standing upon.

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Now whether or not I may be idealizing or romanticizing *my moment* when I know I’ve officially landed in Paris for my study abroad program next spring, there’s a lot to be said about realizing the beauty of a particular moment, no matter how scary it is. And guess what? The same can be said about future jobs, internships, or other exciting applications.

It is often when we are extremely vulnerable that we can begin to make more sense of the world around us, of course that comes after much panic, many worries, and lots of silent or loud cries. But it doesn’t always have to.

You know when you look back at something that you once thought was stressful, but then realize it worked out and it was all dandy, rainbows, unicorns, and the like. But what if, instead of letting our fear for the unknown (in my case, getting through the lovely but maze-like alleyways in Paris in an attempt to not get lost 100% of my time there) we just enjoy the adventure that life throws our way?

I’ve noticed that for myself, I get so carried away in my own nervousness that it often detracts from an otherwise exquisite moment. If we could just be in the present, look at the moment in front of us, as if we were reflecting on it as if it had already passed, knowing it would all work out, imagine how rosy everything may be!

Now it may just be my unrealistic optimism or love for Edith Pilaf’s La Vie en Rose, but if we just rest assured that our street smart skills will kick in when we need them too, or that I will find an extremely helpful Parisian to guide me home, or my inner Francophile will understand the crumbled map in my back pocket, things will work out somehow and someway. And maybe things working out involves me getting even more lost, going in the wrong direction to get to the right direction, and finding this really cute back road, that’s all apart of the beauty of life and its adventure, right? Right (well at least I’d like to think so).

Now whether you can relate to this from having studied abroad or traveled alone or even hoping to get an internship and applying for jobs, it’s best to keep this little dose of optimism in our jacket pockets, in case we ever need to cash it in someday. Because either way, if you get lost, don’t get this job or that internship, you’re life will unravel quite beautifully, and whether its a surprise or not, trust me, it will be okay.

We’ll always have Paris mes amis,

Isabella

 

Salvation from Couch Potato-ness

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Hi everyone! Jasmine here. I’m so excited to return to Beyond the Elms this year. Living in a single has given me a lot of quiet time to reflect on my path at Scripps so far. I’ve had a pretty diverse set of experiences I’m looking forward to sharing through this blog, and I hope you’re looking forward to reading about them too. Since this is my first post, I thought I’d share what I’ve been up to since last fall, just to give you a sense of what my sophomore spring and summer were like. I’d also like to recommend a solid back-up option for finding summer employment!
Spring: Happy happy joy joy abroad!
I studied abroad in London last semester through Boston University’s London Internship Program. I went abroad early as a sophomore, was the first Scripps student to go abroad on this program, and both were reasons to petition the Academic Review Board. If you have any questions about this process, please comment below! I’d be happy to tell you about it. You can also read my previous Beyond the Elms blog posts or my travel diary here.
Return from London…and face plant.
While I was abroad, I made the mistake of forgetting all about planning for my return. I came home in mid-May with stuffed suitcases, an empty bank account, and no idea for what to do. All the application dates for my target internships had passed.
I pride myself on being the responsible sibling, the one my mother can always count on, so it was very uncharacteristic of me not to have a plan. It was the summer after my sophomore year, my last summer to experiment. By the following summer–my last summer as an undergraduate– the pressure of finding an internship in my intended field would set in. (At least, that was how I saw it–I don’t want to stress all of you out!) I was so desperate, I started looking at Craigslist and searching the classifieds in the newspaper. It was *so* last decade. Then my mother, in all her sensible glory, convinced me to reach out to a temp agency.
Temp Agency Proceedings
For those of you who have never worked with a temp agency, here’s how it worked: I called to set up an interview with the agency, where I gave them my resume and walked them through my skills and experience. I told them what kind of a placement I wanted and what I hoped to learn. They contacted me in a few days with an opportunity fitting my description. After I gave my approval, the agency set up an interview with the employer. Through the agency rep, the employer extended an offer, which I accepted, and I started work the next week. Most temp agencies have separate departments for those seeking short term and permanent or long term positions. Summer work is considered short term, while a recent grad would most likely be seeking a permanent placement. It’s important to know that arrangements can change, given both your and the employer’s approval. My position was originally meant to last two weeks, but my employers ended up keeping me for ten, meaning my work lasted the whole summer.
Salvation from Couch Potato-ness Pros and Cons
It was frustrating finding out that the agency charged my employer $18/hr and that I only received $12 of that. It wasn’t particularly glamorous, compared to the lectures and press views I attended in London. But my job at the San Francisco branch of a nationwide engineering firm gave me a solid glimpse of civil and structural engineering despite my having no experience in those fields. And being an office assistant meant I helped and met everyone–whether that was the Vice President who needed a presentation updated, a project manager with shelves to reorganize, or a visiting employee in search of a good place for a lunch meeting. I learned how to compare costs of renting per month and booking hotels per night (Excel spreadsheets with formulas), how to work a comb binding machine (YouTube), and how to handle an upset client (stay calm and use what we at CP&R affectionately call the friendly, “baby lamb” voice). I even met the president of the company! I also gained transferable, basic office accounting skills I could put on my resume.
Moral of the Story
If your summer plans fall through at the last second, a temp agency might be a good solution. I made excellent professional connections and developed skills relevant to my intended industry. I also gained light IT skills I didn’t realize would be so useful in an office. Experimenting with a surprise company in a surprise industry helped me practice adaptability and strengthen my observation skills. It also broadened my level of exposure to other sectors of the economy–insight that will set me apart from other applicants in future. On a final related note, here’s an article on why diversity of thought is important in the workplace.

Perspective

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For the past five months I’ve been studying abroad in Ireland, taking classes in Psychology and Computer Science at University College Cork (you can read my adventures here).  Now, if you’ve ever met me, you know that I am super plugged in to the Los Angeles tech scene, and love nothing more than going to conferences and hearing about the latest trends in the market.  When I was accepted to my study abroad program, I almost considered turning it down because I was terrified of all the opportunities I’d miss by leaving the country.  I’m one of those people who picks a goal and heads toward it at a dead run, ignoring everything on the sidelines.  I was so dead set on being a rising star in the tech industry that the idea of deviating from my path for five months frightened me.  Luckily, I had my father to put it all in perspective. “Alicen, you’re only 20 years old and you’ve got the rest of your life to be chained to a desk, go explore Europe before you put those shackles on”.

Now, my father was being a bit harsh and knows that having a job can be fun and fulfilling if you find the right one, but he was completely correct that I needed to get out and explore while I still could, and Los Angeles would be waiting for me when I returned.  Sometimes when you’re twenty years old, five months can seem like an eternity, especially when we are told as young adults that the job market is awful and we need to be constantly padding our resume if we want any chance of having a career in life.  I feel like I’m constantly sending out internship applications, attending networking events, and updating my LinkedIn profile, praying that I’ll be noticed and have some type of job security in the future.  Forcing myself to let all of that go to leave the country for five months was terrifying.

I’m glad I went, because I believe that removing myself from the LA tech scene actually allowed me to find focus in a way I never would have been able to if I had stayed.  Instead of attending every event and being blinded by the glitz and glam of Los Angeles, I started noticing what really mattered to me.  In LA, there were so many details that I failed to see bigger pictures and trends in tech.  Ireland was like a breath of fresh air, a pause in my life where I suddenly had time to reflect and think critically about what I was doing, instead of working on pure impulse out of fear of missing out.  Even if I won’t always have the time to go to another country for 5 months, I’ve realized that I do need to take the time to pause and reflect every so often, or else I get so caught up in the details of moving forward I miss the bigger picture.

Planning from Day One

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At the beginning of my second semester at Scripps, I remember attending a required, yet enlightening, Off Campus Study information session. I was one of only two freshmen siting quietly in a humanities classroom surrounded by ten or twelve second-semester sophomores. The off campus advisors present didn’t even have the appropriate planning forms for freshmen and they simply asked us to write down my contact information separately with which they would schedule us an appointment. Mostly, they just seemed a bit confused as to why these freshmen were so intent on getting a meeting with Off Campus Study so far ahead of time. Truthfully, from the beginning of my first semester, I knew that there would only be a small window of time to develop what I called my “study abroad strategy” and I wanted to get working on it as soon as possible.

Like I have mentioned many a time on Beyond the Elms, I am a science major. Though undeclared at that point in time, I found myself drawn to Biology and Physics classes and was excited to take each new prerequisite. As a budding Biology student, I knew that I would have to take a substantial number of classes for my major, so planning for my sophomore, junior, and even senior semesters was essential. However, these science classes weren’t the only experiences for which I was ready to start organizing. Since early high school, I had been mesmerized by the mere thought of traveling to Japan. For me, being able to see the wondrous sites of Japan in person excited me to no end. I knew that, once I was in college, an off campus study program was my opportunity to travel there. Unfortunately, my academic and “cultural” goals eventually became mutually exclusive; it would be very difficult to study any field of science in Japan, but additionally impossible to become immersed in Japanese culture staying here at Scripps. Planning for both required finesse and I was determined to start early and fulfill both of my dreams.

While my experience of scheduling early and time management revolved around study abroad, you can utilize this type of approach for many different scenarios. It is first important to recognize what is most valuable to you, either an experience, class, opportunity, etc. Once you determine a goal or two that seems to rise above all others, you can then compare the weight of your other opportunities against them to help you develop a hierarchy or desires. “Demoting” less desired experiences both clears up your scheduling in an effort to work towards those more important tasks and strengthens your desire for certain experiences by understanding why certain wants were eliminated. The next step is to find the people or institutions that can help you achieve those larger, overarching goals. For me, this was done by not only contacting Scripps Off Campus study, but also identifying Scripps during my college search in the first place. Scripps appeared to be an institution where I would have the resources and ability to both participate in science and study abroad. You often don’t have the funds or time to accomplish many of your most important goals all on your own, so finding those people with the connections, resources, and knowledge can help to alleviate that burden.

Given the opportunity to dress in a traditional kimono through my study abroad program

Given the opportunity to dress in a traditional kimono through my study abroad program

Eventually, I was able to get to Japan without falling behind and I am still actively on the road to graduation. Since returning, I’ve been reminded that, without the work I put in before I had even stepped foot in Japan, I may never have gotten there in the first place.

We Do What We Want

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So part of me is wondering why I’m writing for a blog called, “Beyond the Elms,” instead of my own Tumblr or WordPress blog called, “La Vie d’AnnE à Paris.” (If you speak French, you know that kind of rhymes – if not, use your imagination.) I intended to go abroad this semester. I had applied to and was accepted by a program in Paris, and if everything had gone as planned, I’d be writing this from a café in Paris right now.

Unfortunately, last semester taught me that plans often go awry.

Now, before I come off sounding too spoiled, let me set a few things straight. I know things don’t always work out: we get denied from internships and jobs; we don’t get into the classes we need; and sometimes Claremont-WPA goes down right before you finish downloading the latest “New Girl” episode. However, throughout all of my academic and professional hardships, I’ve always found that as long as I plan effectively and I’m thoroughly organized, I can figure out a way to make it work.

Studying abroad was different. I planned. I was prepared. I applied early. I turned in (most of) my forms on time. I had been dreaming about “ma vie à Paris” since I was probably 5 or 6 years old. But none of that could change the reality of the program’s disorganization. I couldn’t make it work.

Eventually, I made one of the hardest decisions I’ve ever made and I withdrew from the program.

After a few days (maybe weeks…) of processing, the hardest decision I had ever made became one of the most empowering. I learned to say no, even to something everyone expected me to do. I’ve realized what I need to feel comfortable in whatever space I happen to be in; I’m not ashamed to know and accept my own needs. Lastly, and most importantly, I now know what it means to take control of my life and do what’s best for me rather than what I think (or what I’m told) I “should” be doing.

We have four years, 8 semesters, 32-40 classes, and not nearly enough time spent tanning poolside at Scripps, and it’s for us to decide what we do with that time and the rest of our lives. (Yup. That escalated quickly.) Just because 60% of the junior class studies abroad doesn’t mean the other 40% aren’t doing something amazing on campus. Just because 80% of students complete internships during their time at Scripps doesn’t mean the other 20% aren’t advancing their careers or their lives in other meaningful ways. We’re Scrippsies; by definition, we buck trends and do what we want – what’s right for us, and for our lives, at that time.

I will live abroad – when the time/place/job is right for me. But for now, the place I want to be editing this blog post is Seal Court, not a Parisian café, and posting it to “Beyond the Elms,” not a blog with a title that, frankly, could use some work. (A title I’ll need to improve before I do get the opportunity to write from Paris…)