I’ve been determined to study internationally since early high school. In fact, I was accepted into my regional Rotary Youth Exchange program during my sophomore year and was selected to spend my entire junior year in Italy. Unfortunately, due to the COVID-19 pandemic, myself and all other students in the program stayed in the United States. Preparing for this experience was one of the most exciting times of my life, and its cancellation was one of my biggest disappointments. While I’m grateful for the memories I made with friends and extracurriculars during my junior year at Montrose High School, the “Italy thing” has been a sore subject over the past five years. This setback, after some grieving, only strengthened my resolve to pursue international travel in college. Despite the disappointment, I’ve come to view this as critical motivation for my choices moving forward.
My family has lived in Colorado for the past 5 generations, and I was determined to go somewhere new for college. My initial desire was to attend high school in Italy, and this translated to interest in colleges outside my home state. However, that obviously didn’t happen. I was intrigued by the University of Denver’s study abroad program, seeing it as the perfect opportunity to fulfill those unrealized dreams. I embraced this path, choosing Italian as my required language sequence and eventually adding an Italian minor. All signs seemed to point to the Italian peninsula, from my language studies to my history with the country. Yet, I’m just over a week away from spending a semester in Africa.
The decision to study in Morocco came as a surprise, but it’s a surprise I’m definitely excited about. As I was browsing DU’s list of partner programs, I found that the ISA Meknes program had everything that I was looking for in my time abroad: courses that complement my major, service-learning opportunities, and it reminded me of my long-standing goal to learn multiple languages. I’ve had the idea in the back of my head since I was very young that I wanted to become multilingual. Now, I’ll have the opportunity to learn Arabic and brush up on my high school French (although, I’ve forgotten everything past “Bonjour, je m’appelle Mattie”).
So here I am, about to take a path I never saw coming. Morocco wasn’t even a brief consideration a year ago, but now it occupies every part of my mind. I haven’t left yet, leaving me with little expertise in this subject. However, if I was to give future study abroad students one piece of advice, it would be to keep your mind open. Even if you’re set on a particular country, still take a look at what everything else has to offer. You can either become even more confident in your initial choice, or you can find something you never knew you wanted. What started as a 15 year-old’s anticipation of Italy evolved into a 20 year-old’s adventure in North Africa. And I wouldn’t change a single thing about that.
DU Abroad 