- That is how many countries there are in the world today. Two hundred and fifty-one destinations and two hundred and fifty-one opportunities to change your life, to bring something new and exciting into it.
At the moment there are many ways to learn about these two hundred and fifty-one destinations. For example, you can go on a short trip or an excursion, or you can simply open social media and read articles or watch videos about places that interest you. However, there is a way that allows you not only to see beautiful sights, taste the cuisine, and get to know the people of a country you like, but also to fully immerse yourself in the world you dream about. And that way is youth travels and student exchange programs.
I have known about exchange programs since my school days thanks to my environment.
Rumors, spreading by a broken telephone, fill the earth. One day I came to school — and all anyone talked about was a girl from a parallel class (let’s call her Ksyusha) who had practically moved to another country for good. At first I thought she was just traveling again with her family, but her sisters continued to attend classes, so it clearly wasn’t that. Asking the sisters was a hopeless task: they were excellent at keeping secrets. So there was nothing to do but wait for news from Ksyusha herself.
In general, when I was at school, the main titan of social networks across the post-Soviet space was VKontakte. Aside from calls to mobile phones, you learned about other people’s lives exclusively from posts and statuses. And it was thanks to the news feed that I once found out where Ksyusha was and what she was doing. One post contained a detailed story about how she ended up in Sweden — that’s how I learned about exchange programs.
It felt as if a new world had opened up to me. I realized that countries can be studied not only superficially by simply traveling there, that they are not limited to their most famous sightseeing spots and attractions photographed from bus windows, and that to get to know the people of a country you cannot rely only on talking to a guiding chaperone. I understood that to truly feel the culture, the people, and life in the country itself, you can immerse yourself in it from within, become a part of it just like millions of other people. And exchange programs can help with exactly that.
If you ask me now what exchange programs mean to me, I will answer that they are a chance to gain something new and change the old. They are like a switch: at first you just live for today and that is enough for you, and then there’s a "click" — and you learn that everything can be different.
Gathering bits of information from Instagram posts, YouTube videos and other corners of the internet, I formed an idea of what I would like to get out of participating in a program:
First — experience. Participating in an exchange program is truly a one-of-a-kind, you might even say extraordinary, experience. It is not something you can take part in every day or whenever you feel like it. It is very inspiring, vivid impressions and a unique opportunity to learn something new. It is unlikely that this experience can be repeated or compared with anything else.
Second — people. I generally like people; they can motivate and inspire by themselves. But people are also the business card of any country, its face. It is primarily thanks to people that impressions of everything are formed. Communicating with local residents helps you fully merge into the country’s culture and allows you to see it as it really is, without embellishment. It is also a good opportunity to make new friends and acquaintances.
Third — tourism. Of course, where would one be without natural beauty and attractions. Thanks to exchange programs you can walk through picturesque places in the country, try its national cuisine, visit museums and theaters — in general, do everything you could do if you had come to the country as an ordinary tourist.
Fourth — knowledge. Exchange programs allow students to study subjects of interest at the world’s best universities. Studying in another country with different perspectives provides very useful academic experience. You will have to face a different kind of competition, which will make you reassess yourself and the knowledge provided by universities in your home country. Also, a different academic atmosphere will motivate you to approach the information you receive in a completely different way.
Fifth — language. Immersion in a natural environment helps improve language skills much faster and more effectively than reading books full of rules that have nothing to do with the real language and the people who speak it. It is almost impossible to do this fully in your own country, because at home and at work, with relatives and friends, we speak our native language, and without such an opportunity abroad the brain will adapt on its own, gradually getting used to another language. After all, life isn’t the same without a foreign language.
Sixth — personal growth. Participating in an exchange program forces you to grow up. For most participants in such programs it is the first time they are truly left alone far from their loved ones and from home, and the stress of forced solitude cannot be underestimated. They are taken out of their comfort zone and made to cope with situations (by the way, this somewhat resembles dorm life, hehe). Therefore this experience helps you learn to act independently, manage yourself and your life, make decisions and take responsibility for them. And such conditions also give the opportunity to spend more time with yourself, to get to know yourself better and to think about many things in your life.
But primarily I believe that exchange programs can really help my career.
My name is Karina, and I am a chemist. Even since my school days I have been attracted to this wonderful science. When I entered university, I dreamed of going to another country where chemistry in its various fields develops on a much larger scale. Every chemistry student has heard big names like Shimadzu (Japan), Agilent Technologies, Ecolab and Thermo Fisher Scientific (USA), Bayer and BASF (Germany). I am sure that some of these company names are known not only to chemists but also to people far removed from chemistry by profession. Objectively speaking, the level of knowledge provided by our universities is not enough for the development of chemical science and its industrial sector in Belarus. Therefore I have always wanted to listen and see for myself how chemical sciences are taught at universities in Germany, the USA and Japan, and if possible to become part of this global chemical industry.
Now, after graduating from university, I am working at a customs laboratory to fulfill the obligations of my free education. Unfortunately, my expectations did not match reality very well even after completing production and pre-graduation internships in the laboratory. I want more. Therefore exchange programs are of great interest to me.
I understand that there are surely "hidden pitfalls" as well. On the one hand it seems that exchange programs bring only benefits. But disadvantages can be found everywhere. First, it is simply expensive. It cannot be that top-notch education and magical impressions and experience are accidentally free, and we are talking about reality. Nevertheless, the opportunity to work part-time in some exchange programs allows you to recoup previous expenses to a greater extent. Second, distance. When you live most of your life with your loved ones and friends, parting from them becomes a big problem. However, there is an adaptation period for this. Over time the homesickness for home and loved ones dulls, which is also helped by new acquaintances and new activities. Third, the mentality of the host country may differ radically from what you are used to. And even if these differences are critical and fundamental, if you decide to go to such a country, you essentially sign up to live by its rules, not trying to mold other people to suit yourself, but adapting on your own.
For me personally a significant drawback of exchange programs is the age criterion. Exchange programs are mainly aimed at schoolchildren and university students who have not yet really decided what they are going to do with their lives. But for people like me, who have only recently finished their studies and are dissatisfied with the current situation, there are not so many opportunities to go abroad for study or internship, so you have to try ten times harder to achieve your goal.
Summing up, I do not know what our world will be like in twenty years, let alone in fifty. The world changes, and all these changes are often unexpected, but always inevitable, to which one simply has to adapt or, conversely, change everything to suit oneself as opportunities allow. And along with the world, exchange programs improve too — their formats, their scale, the directions of their development — but one thing remains unchanged: such programs allow you to open the world to yourself... and open yourself to the world!