Grab a Plane Ticket and Lets Go!

College, for me, never really felt like a choice, but instead felt like something that I was supposed to do. Nothing wrong with that either, as most of my favorite moments have been at the College of Charleston, but I knew that I always wanted to go to college and more specifically this college. What I didn’t know, however, was that I would ever change my “dream” of being a Communications major, but here I sit typing this blog as a very happy English major. I could have never guessed that I would be graduating college as an English major, or that I could have ever made so many incredible friends, and that this major could have done so much for me.

More importantly, the English major has given me more opportunities to meet people and experience more things as well. One of these opportunities was the fact that I was even able to travel to London, England, for a month-long summer study abroad in 2022. The study abroad was regarding the “gothic” and gothic literature, as well as their relation to Victorian London. Though I am

originally from England, and very much did use this as a trip to visit my family, I learned and was introduced to so much more than I would probably ever get to experience as a normal tourist or citizen. Side note, while I know that this experience was not necessarily at CofC, it was in fact with a CofC professor who has taught me multiple times and is also my major and minor advisor (shout out to professor Carens since he can never escape me). Though this trip was through the University of Southern Mississippi, I was surrounded by lots of CofC English majors and my advisor, making the trip feel like I was participating even further with the major itself.

What I didn’t know at the time was that I would actually enjoy the “studying” part of the study abroad. We worked on blog posts for every location we went to and every play we were able to see. In addition to the class work, I was also a study abroad ambassador for the trip and my class, which meant I needed to document, record, and photograph everything my group did on the trip. While this may seem annoying or like more work to some, it was incredibly fun for me as this was essentially what I want to do as a career. At the time I wasn’t thinking that “I want to go on a study abroad to practice skills and writing for my future career,” but thinking back on it now, this opportunity not only helped hone my skills as an English major but also helped me to practice my skills as (hopefully) an aspiring journalist or more. In his article, David Brooks examines the argument against the rise of A.I. as writers and thinkers saying that “If you can understand another person’s perspective, you have a more valuable skill than the skill possessed by some machine,” and I would have to agree with him wholeheartedly.

Though we are progressing forward in technology, I think the importance of human understanding and feelings is even more important. Yes, a computer may be able to write something in an established format, but it cannot understand or explain what goes on inside of our own heads. Being able to be immersed in the city that we were reading about, and surrounded by many like-minded friends, really influenced the way I wrote and thought during my trip. Steven Mintz makes this even more apparent in his article as he mentions that “human beings are not just political animals or social beings. We are storytellers who conceive of our lives in terms of narrative episodes,” and he would be right. We as humans are storytellers made up of the stories from our pasts, as well as the ones that we will write, and that is what makes us well human. That is the essence of humanity that makes me happy that I am an English major and that I get to be one of the many who will dictate our human experiences and histories.

What I never could have guessed at the time, is just how much that study-abroad trip would change me for the better. Though I have the privilege of saying that I was going back to the country of my birth that still holds my family and their history today, it was different. It was nothing like any of the trips my family have ever made back, nor was it anything like when we lived in England.

This trip held historical and literary power. Yes, I know that sounds pretty cheesy. However, being so immersed in a city that I know fairly well, but this time through an educational and productive lens, offered me a richer understanding of what we were learning and just of the literature in general. Being given a chance to read and contextualize the works in both a literary and historical sense broaden the way I think about literature and writing today.

I think that without the study abroad I would not have realized just how influential literature and writing truly are, centuries after they were even written. Being able to document and relay all of what I learned to my professor and peers, has made more definite in my choice to pursue writing and journalism. As Karen Swallow Prior says: “what good literature can do and does do — far greater than any importation of morality — is touch the human soul.” I want to give others the chance to experience places and experiences, the same way I have been able to do so through reading.

In other words, I want to write to inspire and bring passion or understanding to as many people as I can.

One Response to Grab a Plane Ticket and Lets Go!

  1. Prof VZ April 7, 2023 at 3:10 pm #

    Lovely reflection here centering on your study abroad experience. These narratives tend to focus on a range of key experiences, but they can also expand on one representative one. It would be cool, though, to try to build in some reference to things you’ve done beyond the academic realm as well. Do you think there might be room for that? Also, I’d love to get a deeper sense of details here, using an illustration of a particular play you saw, or reading a specific work in a specific setting. You narrate these things from a sort of middle focus–not abstract, but not highly detailed either. Details bring these things to life! In the interest in beginning these essays the midst of a more dynamic thought or action, you might revisit the opening — perhaps starting with a detailed scene from your study abroad trip that sets up the narrative and the kinds of values and interests that you make clear later.

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