Coming Home

One of Lancaster’s main selling points is the amount of international students it attracts. In my flat of 8 people including myself, not one person was English. Students from Italy, Greece, Hong Kong and Cyprus shared the flat with me, and all of us had different ideas and experiences of what it meant to be a foreign student. Not only were there students from Allegheny, but a large group of other Americans were visiting this semester as well. Someone who turned out to be largely invaluable as a friend and study partner was a foreign student as well. The university prides itself on the ability to bring in and retain students from across the globe. From that viewpoint, and that understanding, my understanding of my place in a global education is infinitesimal. After these experiences it is easy to think that my contribution or my ideas are nearly irrelevant among the sea of voices who also have a similar perspective, or tackle the same question uniquely. It doesn’t matter what my thoughts are because the thoughts of others are “better” or “more interesting” or a myriad of value judgements that make my experiences lesser. I came to Lancaster thinking I would be educated and my modest opinions would be afterthoughts.

I could not have been more wrong. While it is true, my experiences is one in a large amount of other foreign students at the university, and while yes, I was humbled by my education I received, it was met with equal teaching. I was able to teach and to learn in tandem, and become more adept at both understanding differences and working with them more cohesively. My experiences with my peers and friends here were eye opening not just for me as I had expected but for them too. I was fortunate in my ability to be a resource as well as a recipient of information and understanding. I was humbled by the questions I was asked, and understand that it reflected very heavily on cross-cultural understanding how I answered those questions.

My understanding of global education agrees with the article. I think that I would add to it however. The experiences Lancaster provided me are both teaching and learning experiences. While learning was the primary goal, teaching became a side effect of interacting with people who did not know much about the United States, just as I knew little about England. There was a movement of give and take, a shared understanding that grew from my time with people I would not have otherwise encountered, and this is the reason global education is important. Not only does the person traveling learn in abundance, but they teach the people they encounter abroad. It is important for any study away student to know that their interactions are just as unique to the people they interact with as the encounters are to themselves. My role in global education expanded to include being a teacher as well as a student, and for that I am grateful. I was expecting to be bombarded with information, and I was right on the nose with that prediction. My surprise came from sending just as much information back to the people I was interacting with. The true mission of global education is not one sided, and I learned this first hand.