Janet Bland, English Professor

If I had to name something in my life that offered me depth and perspective into my own existence, something so valuable that I would not want to have missed, I would have to say that the opportunities I have had in my life to study abroad have been priceless.

I have traveled a lot, and had many opportunities to be far from home as a tourist, but brief trips such as these do not immerse one in a new culture. If you want to know who you really are, who you might become, there's nothing like leaving your home, and all that's comforting and familiar, and finding your reflection in different and distant mirrors.

I was an exchange student in (then) West Germany in my junior year of high school. I lived in Bonn and attended Beethoven Gymnasium as part of a direct exchange program between B.G. and my school in Seattle, WA. It was 1982--the last years of the cold war. I was living in the capital of a divided Germany, a country still shaped by the loss of WWII. President Reagan was coming to Bonn to discuss military issues with people like the father (a high-ranking naval officer) of my exchange family, and all of western Europe had something to say about it. Germans I spoke to were very aware of being on the front lines of the cold war, the first line of defense against the Soviets. A commonly expressed German fear at the time was that America believed a limited nuclear war could (and should) be successfully fought in central Europe—in Germany and Poland—against the USSR. It sounds strange today, but at the time, it must have seemed real and frightening.

In response to Reagan's visit to Bonn, my usual routine of school was disrupted. There were concerts, political actions, and a rally of over 250,000 people. My exchange family were very pro-American, and they tended to protect me from anything they felt might be a problem. We left a concert early once when one performer got a little heated against the U.S., and instead of attending the rally, we had a picnic in the Siebengibirge. I was also in the audience of a live broadcast German talkshow when a political group took over the station for some political performance art.

This was like nothing I had ever seen. I was never afraid of saying I was an American; I was and still am quite proud to be an American, and there was nothing happening that would have been scary for me. However, for the first time I saw the world through the eyes of Germans, and I began to understand that we had relationships with other countries—relationships that were dynamic and complicated. I began to understand that German history and national identity did not end with WWII.

While in Bonn, I never felt I was watching our German allies hate America, so much as I was watching a divided Germany begin to redefine and reshape their place in the world and their relationship with us. No Germans I knew then would have said that reunification of their country would come before the end of the decade, but as I look back now I see that change was clearly happening. They were beginning to shape themselves in a way that made the fall of the Berlin wall in 1989 seem almost inevitable. I had the great good fortune to be there, and (through my exchange family) to meet some of the famous and powerful people involved in these international negotiations between America and Germany. I would have never seen or, or even begun to understand the transformation of Germany if I had not been there in 1982.

My opportunities to study abroad have taught me a lot about Germany, but they also taught me a lot about myself--about what was important to me, about what I wanted strangers to know about me or trust in me. Study abroad isn't usually protests and international drama; in fact, it almost never is. But study abroad is always amazing, and challenging, and informative. Students should leave home, speak a different language, eat different food and talk to different people. Students should go study where they do not disappear against the background, a place where they use their minds and hearts to discover the self and connect in a way that can only happen far from home.