Tea Time with Anna Rose
Foreign exchange students always fascinated me, and it wasn’t just the accent. It was because they contained something I didn’t—a courage and independence that allowed them to do something that I knew I never could—cross an ocean and land in the unknown to study abroad.
But as we all learn, life is funny.
Hi, I am Anna Rose. Junior. From Tennessee. Double major in theatre and English. And studying abroad at the University of Birmingham, England for nine months. This feature column will take you with me on my adventure from Birmingham to Birmingham.
Why am I studying abroad?
It is time for me to leave. I had always been content to be just where I was. Then last summer my family traveled west to Sedona, AZ. It was a new world. Red rock towered to a sky bigger and bluer than the one back home. Wild-eyed creatures skirted spiny succulents. And the air! The air made me want to run around naked. It was the air that Pocahontas would have painted with and the air that God breathes into the lungs of a child’s first breath. Suddenly, the Southeastern United States where I had lived contently for nineteen years felt like that tiny, extra pocket on a pair of denim jeans—a place too small for anything to fit inside for long.
When I returned from AZ, I heard hands slapping hollow drums in Zambia. I heard the Pacific crashing onto the shores of New Zealand. I heard squabbling voices rising above the bazaar in Pakistan. I heard the world, and the world said, “Come.” But all I could reply was, “I have nothing to give you. I have not finished my education. I have no skill.” Still, knowledge is an eternally binding marriage, and I could not stay in my pocket knowing what lay outside.
So I am studying abroad, because through studying abroad, I can earn my education; I can build my skills; and I can adventure through this wide, wide world. Finances and language barriers are determining realities, so my choices for studying abroad are limited to English-speaking universities that hold exchange programs with BSC. The University of Birmingham in England holds such an exchange program and happens to be a top-ranked university.
Exchange programs provide the most economical means to study abroad by allowing students to pay their home tuition, including financial aid, and the exchange school’s room and board. Translation: You can pay the same amount of money to study abroad as you are paying to go to BSC. Let me repeat that: What are you still doing here?
If you too want to study abroad, then go to the International Programs office on the second floor of Norton and talk with Mrs. Ledvina. Also, check out http://www.bsc.edu/academics/oip/index.cfm for BSC’s International Program information. Go. Now!
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