LEAVING HARVARD
For many Harvard students, these benefits are not enough to outweigh what students must give up when they leave campus.
Jeffrey C. Atwood ’13, a computer science concentrator, chose not to study abroad because he feared the repercussions of missing classes on campus. “I don’t really do anything academically that would involve a foreign country,” he says. “With my concentration, it wouldn’t have made sense to miss a whole semester.”
In particular, a number of seniors expressed the opinion that study abroad does not seem to accommodate academic pursuits in math and science. “It’s harder to fulfill your requirements abroad,” says Anne M. Baldwin ’13, a chemistry and physics concentrator. But she added that this was her personal perception as a freshman—and not necessarily the reality.
Students also worry about the effect that leaving campus could have on friendships and extracurriculars.
“I only did study abroad during the summer because I just never wanted to miss a whole semester and be away from all of my friends,” says chemistry and physics concentrator Lawrence Chan ’13. “I don’t want to miss out on anything happening here on campus.”
C’EST LA VIE
Leaving Harvard may not be as difficult for math and science students as they think. In fact, many students concentrating in the more quantitative fields said they found that studying abroad actually complemented their curriculums.
Human and evolutionary biology concentrator and Crimson arts editor Leanna B. Ehrlich ’14 is currently studying abroad in Kenya’s Great Rift Valley at the Turkana Basin Institute Field School.
“It’s a field school for students studying archaeology, paleoanthropology and/or human evolution,” she writes in an email from Kenya. “It seemed like a perfect fit—I’d always wanted to take classes in related fields that would help me get a greater understanding of my major, but just hadn’t gotten around to it yet.”
The Office of International Education lists numerous math and science study abroad programs, ranging from the Harvard College Program in Cuba, which offers courses in environmental and medical sciences, to the Organization for Tropical Studies, through which students can study biology in Costa Rica or South Africa. Additionally, the OIE allows students to find or design independent programs tailored to their concentration.
That going abroad requires leaving behind friends and extracurriculars for a semester, however, is unavoidable—and can sometimes lead to lost opportunities.
“It was definitely hard emotionally to leave these smaller communities at Harvard of which I had been a part,” says Wang. “I wanted to run for president of a dance group but I obviously wasn’t there for a whole semester and there were always new members coming in. So I didn’t win the election.”
But for Wang and many of her peers, the experiences offered by study abroad more than compensate for those lost in Cambridge. Wang took private voice lessons for the first time at a jazz school in Germany and realized that in addition to dancing, she loves to sing and act.
“It was really hard seeing the email with the election results but looking back that was just a small setback,” she explains. “I didn’t win but I was still passionate about performing arts and worked harder for my singing and involving myself more in theater and dancing more with the group and now I’m running again for co-president.”
Almost all students interviewed for this article who spent a semester abroad echoed Wang’s sentiment: the initial fears and potential drawbacks of leaving are not sufficient reason to reject studying abroad.
“I don’t know anyone who has regretted studying abroad,” says Psychas. “But I do know a lot of people who have regretted not studying abroad. It’s hard to see when you’re a sophomore but once you’re a senior it’ll be really obvious.”
—Staff writer Pooja Podugu can be reached at podugu@college.harvard.edu. Follow her on Twitter @PoojaPodugu.