Summer is already about halfway over and I still talk about Germany all the time. People still haven't stopped asking me about it and I still haven't come up with that perfect answer to the question. It's definitely made me want to travel even more and go back to Europe to finish seeing everything.
Harrison and Kunal, if you guys read this and make fun of it, I will leave your terrible childhood pictures from Facebook taped onto the doors of your labs :)
This reflection post is supposed to be really long and cover everything, but I don't even know where to begin. There's so much about this trip that I could talk about.
I heard about this program during my new student conference two years ago and I wanted to go ever since. I started off in a different major my freshman year though, so I thought I couldn't apply and gave up on going until Dr. Wasser brought the students from last year to talk to our physiology class. My parents definitely did not want me to go and tried to convince me to stay right up until the day I left for Frankfurt. As expensive as this trip was, I am so glad I went.
I went into the trip with a checklist of things I wanted to get out of it and for the most part, I completed the list. I wanted to get all As (which didn't really work because I dropped the ball on physiology), be able to get honors credits, finish diffeq without having to take summer school, visit a concentration camp, travel as much as possible with the money I had, get to know my host family, make friends with the people on the trip, be more independent, and convince my parents that I am capable of doing things on my own. I think the biggest success of this trip is that I showed my parents that I can travel alone and manage money pretty well, so that deserves a nice yaaaassss.
The part of the trip I was most scared of was getting along with the other people on the trip. I used to dread the pre-departure meetings because I didn't know anyone and I was so afraid they wouldn't like me, so I usually ran to the back of the room and didn't talk to anyone. It's hilarious to think about that now because I can't imagine this summer or this next year without them. It's crazy how much being around them motivated me to do more with my summer, like getting into a research lab or applying to be a camp counselor. They're pretty great people and I am so glad I get to be friends with them.
Something I'm really happy about is the fact that we had pretty great teachers in Germany and I learned a lot. Back home, everyone was struggling with signals and diffeq, but Esteban tried pretty hard to teach us and I got a lot of help from all the other biomedical engineers. We also had an awesome tutor for diffeq who definitely saved my grade. More than that, I'm really glad I got to learn from Dr. Wasser. We already knew he that he's a fantastic physiology professor, but all of the lessons he gave us on our excursions were an awesome bonus.
In the past two months, my host mom has texted me several times with updates on my host brother's confirmation and floor hockey games or on my host sister's triathlons. As weird as it felt living in a stranger's house for so many months, I miss it a lot. I miss studying on their dining table with the light flooding in through all of their many windows. Now that I think about it, they had a lot of windows. I miss learning German with them at the dinner table and partially understanding the arguments my host siblings had with their parents. I did not get the chance to get very close with my family since I spent so much time studying at the AIB, but my host parents were so kind and I miss talking to them quite a bit.
Last but not least, the traveling! We saw so many places. I got to see Vienna, Amsterdam, Rome, Barcelona, Berlin, Paris, and Prague. It was so amazing to see the places that I've read about in books and see the history in them. This was mostly Rome, since you could wander anywhere and come across a ruin. I loved experiencing all the different cultures, languages, and people. Vienna, Prague, and Barcelona were beautiful cities. I had so much fun traveling the past few months. I learned so much and saw so many cool things, like the museum in Vienna or the catacombs in Rome. Damn, I love traveling.
So far in the weeks that I've been back, all of my family and friends ask me about the trip and I say "it was great!" The most common reaction is "that's it?" No, that's not it, but I can't describe it in a word and there's not enough time in the world for me to go through every amazing memory I have of the trip. I can't talk about that time we climbed through a fence when we got stuck in a park in Bacelona, or when we went to the top of the dome of St. Peter's Basilica, or that last day in Vienna when we rushed to grab every tram possible so we could see one last church before we left, or when Hazel, Ryan, Amy, and I would go sit in a coffee shop in a random city and just talk, or the many nights in Bonn when we would go grab drinks after class. That's barely even scratching the surface. Who could forget that time in class when Dr. Wasser yelled at the laptop or when he saw Mitchell eating a Berliner and stopped class to talk about donuts, or when he sang Baby Got Back in class/on the bus to Aachen/at a restaurant?
The trip may not have been completely life-changing, but it changed my mindset and was a great experience that I won't forget. I am so happy I had the chance to go to Germany and meet these amazing people.
Harrison and Kunal, if you guys read this and make fun of it, I will leave your terrible childhood pictures from Facebook taped onto the doors of your labs :)
This reflection post is supposed to be really long and cover everything, but I don't even know where to begin. There's so much about this trip that I could talk about.
I heard about this program during my new student conference two years ago and I wanted to go ever since. I started off in a different major my freshman year though, so I thought I couldn't apply and gave up on going until Dr. Wasser brought the students from last year to talk to our physiology class. My parents definitely did not want me to go and tried to convince me to stay right up until the day I left for Frankfurt. As expensive as this trip was, I am so glad I went.
I went into the trip with a checklist of things I wanted to get out of it and for the most part, I completed the list. I wanted to get all As (which didn't really work because I dropped the ball on physiology), be able to get honors credits, finish diffeq without having to take summer school, visit a concentration camp, travel as much as possible with the money I had, get to know my host family, make friends with the people on the trip, be more independent, and convince my parents that I am capable of doing things on my own. I think the biggest success of this trip is that I showed my parents that I can travel alone and manage money pretty well, so that deserves a nice yaaaassss.
The part of the trip I was most scared of was getting along with the other people on the trip. I used to dread the pre-departure meetings because I didn't know anyone and I was so afraid they wouldn't like me, so I usually ran to the back of the room and didn't talk to anyone. It's hilarious to think about that now because I can't imagine this summer or this next year without them. It's crazy how much being around them motivated me to do more with my summer, like getting into a research lab or applying to be a camp counselor. They're pretty great people and I am so glad I get to be friends with them.
Something I'm really happy about is the fact that we had pretty great teachers in Germany and I learned a lot. Back home, everyone was struggling with signals and diffeq, but Esteban tried pretty hard to teach us and I got a lot of help from all the other biomedical engineers. We also had an awesome tutor for diffeq who definitely saved my grade. More than that, I'm really glad I got to learn from Dr. Wasser. We already knew he that he's a fantastic physiology professor, but all of the lessons he gave us on our excursions were an awesome bonus.
In the past two months, my host mom has texted me several times with updates on my host brother's confirmation and floor hockey games or on my host sister's triathlons. As weird as it felt living in a stranger's house for so many months, I miss it a lot. I miss studying on their dining table with the light flooding in through all of their many windows. Now that I think about it, they had a lot of windows. I miss learning German with them at the dinner table and partially understanding the arguments my host siblings had with their parents. I did not get the chance to get very close with my family since I spent so much time studying at the AIB, but my host parents were so kind and I miss talking to them quite a bit.
Last but not least, the traveling! We saw so many places. I got to see Vienna, Amsterdam, Rome, Barcelona, Berlin, Paris, and Prague. It was so amazing to see the places that I've read about in books and see the history in them. This was mostly Rome, since you could wander anywhere and come across a ruin. I loved experiencing all the different cultures, languages, and people. Vienna, Prague, and Barcelona were beautiful cities. I had so much fun traveling the past few months. I learned so much and saw so many cool things, like the museum in Vienna or the catacombs in Rome. Damn, I love traveling.
So far in the weeks that I've been back, all of my family and friends ask me about the trip and I say "it was great!" The most common reaction is "that's it?" No, that's not it, but I can't describe it in a word and there's not enough time in the world for me to go through every amazing memory I have of the trip. I can't talk about that time we climbed through a fence when we got stuck in a park in Bacelona, or when we went to the top of the dome of St. Peter's Basilica, or that last day in Vienna when we rushed to grab every tram possible so we could see one last church before we left, or when Hazel, Ryan, Amy, and I would go sit in a coffee shop in a random city and just talk, or the many nights in Bonn when we would go grab drinks after class. That's barely even scratching the surface. Who could forget that time in class when Dr. Wasser yelled at the laptop or when he saw Mitchell eating a Berliner and stopped class to talk about donuts, or when he sang Baby Got Back in class/on the bus to Aachen/at a restaurant?
The trip may not have been completely life-changing, but it changed my mindset and was a great experience that I won't forget. I am so happy I had the chance to go to Germany and meet these amazing people.
No comments:
Post a Comment