My time in the International Scholars Program taught me a great deal about myself and my willingness to step outside of my comfort zone in a variety of scenarios. I am grateful for the fact that through this program, I was exposed to languages, cultures, history, politics, and so much more in addition to my regular undergraduate coursework. I have always been a firm believer in learning through practical application rather than simply via the absorption of knowledge in a classroom setting. To me, ISP was structured in such a way that I was forced to learn not only in classroom settings, but outside in the real world. This holistic approach has ultimately proven to be extremely effective for me in not only enabling me to retain what I have learned in my internationally focused classes and campus life events, but also in helping me realize how I want to continue internationalizing my life and career moving forward after I graduate from the University of Florida. 

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          I consider myself very lucky that when I was growing up, my parents had instilled a sense of cultural awareness in me for as long as I can remember. Although my parents emigrated from Romania with the intent to have a better life in the United States, they never abandoned their roots entirely, teaching me the language and numerous aspects of the culture of my ancestry. The main reason why I loved learning foreign languages growing up, and I continue to do so now is because my parents did not raise me to speak English until I went to school. It was difficult for me to reconcile speaking two languages in two different environments as a five year old, but in retrospect I consider the experience to be invaluable, as I now actively seek out new languages to learn and can pick them up with relative ease. In addition to that, they also took me and my brothers on frequent trips, both domestic and international, to expose me to the world around me. Back then as well as now, it was the international trips that always captivated me the most, and I can say with certainty that they will continue to do so in the future. Even with the privilege of international travel before attending college, my worldview was, in my opinion, still pretty limited. I knew that I still had much to learn about other cultures and their histories. When I first heard about the International Scholars Program and the requirements I would have to fulfill to complete it, I knew that I had to sign up, and I never looked back. 

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          It is through my coursework as well as the campus life events and my study abroad opportunity that I really found out what I wanted to do with my life following my undergraduate studies. Going into college, my aspirations included working in a political capacity, but I wanted to couple that with the ability to travel to other countries, speak other languages, and immerse myself in other cultures. When the COVID-19 pandemic hit in early 2020, the uncertainty that came at the time made me reflect deeply and think about how I want to achieve those goals in a world that seemingly changed overnight. I knew I wanted to continue developing my communication skills and foreign language competency, so I took an Introduction to Linguistics course out of interest as well as to fulfill an ISP course requirement. Little did I know that taking that one course would lead to me adding on an entirely new major that would influence how I approached language and how I would incorporate it into my future career. Because of Zoom, I was also able to tune in to multiple seminars and conferences related to international events and history that expanded my knowledge about regions of the world I had not previously invested myself in, such as Latin America and the Middle East.

 

          In summer of 2022, when the uncertainty around COVID-19 had abated to a large degree, I was finally able to fulfill my deferred dream of studying abroad. This experience also consisted of me putting my foot into the door into a field I knew I was interested in but have not exposed myself to that much. When I went to Europe for the Environmental Ethics and Sustainability Politics program, I was astonished to see just how much I had to learn about sustainability and the built environment and how far ahead of the United States Europe was. Given my limited background, it was hard for me to keep up with some of the concepts generally taught in sustainability courses, and I had questioned whether or not I would even be competent in this field due to my lack of knowledge and my difficulty in being able to present my thoughts on certain concepts during the course, but the hands-on aspect of the study abroad as well as ample question-and-answer time with guest speakers helped to solidify the key concepts of sustainability and climate change in my mind. It also made me see that what I truly wanted to do after graduation consists of something at the intersection of sustainability efforts and global policy. Thanks to the International Scholars Program, I was able to find myself through opportunities for self-reflection as well as exposure to different niches that enabled me to narrow down what my strengths and weaknesses were. I truly cannot wait to see where life takes me following my graduation from UF!