"I did study abroad at pretty much every level of my education. The biggest experience was in high school. I was sixteen and it was kind of a... plop down. I went to Italy. Back then, things were different, right? All of this support structure that exists now did not exist in the 90s for international exchange. They just sent me there. I went by myself, I got from the airport by myself, I picked my classes by myself, and I just kind of…found my way by myself. I had a host family (that I remained very close with) but there wasn't a twenty-four-hour emergency support line. And I was in high school, that wasn't even college. There's a lot of learning to be done in that, right?
The value of cultural exchange is, I think, just getting to know people, getting to know where you differ, where you’re alike, how you work together. Even across those things that are different, how can you take the best of both worlds and incorporate them into your life to create a world that you'd like?"
