Guest blog: Yale study abroad, Czech!

Editor's note: This guest blog is from Jess Carballo, a junior in Saybrook who is abroad in Prague this spring.

Greetings from Prague! My semester abroad is well underway, and I'm excited to tell you all about it!

Yale encourages all its students to go abroad at some point during their four years, either as a part of an academic program or for an internship through the International Bulldogs program. After hearing about my friends' experiences in Spain, London, and India, I decided that going abroad was something I wanted to experience for myself.

Everyone at Yale was super supportive of my decision to go abroad, from the professors who wrote me letters of recommendation, to the staff at the study abroad office who helped me research opportunities abroad. There are over 150 approved programs to choose from, and you can petition for a program to be reviewed for approval if it's not on the list already.

Along with the resources and support Yale provides, the university makes study abroad all the more accessible with financial aid: students who qualify for aid can have their award transferred to the institution at which they are studying abroad. Thanks to Yale's awesome financial aid program, I can study in Europe for the same price as New Haven. Amazing, right? How could you not study abroad?

Well, leaving Yale is hard to do. Junior year is the time when you become president of that club you've been in for two years, the editor of that publication, the head of that organization, yadda yadda. When not running whatever it is you do, you're busy fulfilling requirements for your major (which you just decided on or changed), or applying to that internship you've been waiting two years to be eligible for. And what about your friends?

Deciding to study abroad wasn't easy, for all those reasons plus a few others (my room first semester was AMAZING). I was so comfortable and happy at Yale, I had no reason to leave, but I didn't think that an opportunity to study abroad was something I could pass up without a few regrets. So I decided to fill out an application and pack my bags.

After much careful deliberation, I ended up choosing to study with NYU in Prague. I wanted to go somewhere I did not speak the language, and I wanted to enter into a culture that was completely foreign to me. I also wanted to study with a progam where I didn't know anyone else, so that I would have to adapt and make friends quickly rather than stick to my comfort zone.

The Czech Republic has definitely provided the study abroad experience I was looking for - it's completely different from any other place I have ever been before, and I felt completely lost when I first got here because of it. Now, after about a month, I can speak some Czech, navigate the metro system, and even cook some Czech dishes (goulash = delicious)!

I've made friends with both Czech students (one of whom took me to a Czech ska/punk concert the other night) and other kids in my programs, who, though Americans, are different from any of my friends at Yale. Some of them study acting at the Tisch School for the Arts at NYU, or theology at a small Christian school, and interacting with them in the classroom is very different from being in a classroom at Yale. Studying with non-Yale students and professors has been a really cool experience, but it also makes me realize what I love most about Yale, and I'm looking forward to jumping back into academics at Yale. No school has ever challenged me more than Yale, and I am so grateful for the education I have received there so far.

In Prague, I'm studying cultures of dissent under totalitarianism - basically, the way people respond to oppression, usually through nonviolent means. The Czech Republic was under Nazi control, then Soviet rule, and did not gain its soverignty until the 1990s. Now it's an EU country bouncing back, but the Czechs never forgot their past. One of my professors here led the student resistance movement during the Velvet revolution in 1989, and she has some great stories to share. I'm looking forward to a field trip to the theater where she and a few of her friends planned a revolution.

Along with learning a lot about Central European history and culture, I'm also traveling throughout the area. I've been to Budapest and Bratislava so far, and I"m planning on going to Germany and Austria. Prague is also close enough to Western Europe that I can take weekend trips to places like Rome, where I was a few weeks ago. I'm spending my spring break in Barcelona, Madrid, and Paris, which is something that would never have been possible for me if I were not already studying in Europe.

Being here is very different from being in New Haven, and it only makes me appreciate Yale all the more. The experiences I have had at Yale are still the best in my life, and I have had more fun in New Haven than in Rome or Prague or Budapest (sounds crazy, but it's true)!. I can't wait to go back to campus and blend my European experience with my Yale experience to see how both have helped me grow. I'm so thankful for all that Yale provides, including the opportunity to study abroad, and I can't wait to see where this semester takes me.

It just keeps getting better.

I'll keep you updated!

All the best,
Jessica