SAVANNAH MOZINGO

Specific program: Direct Exchange with University of Strathclyde

Location: Glasgow, Scotland

Dates: Fall 2012

 

The United Kingdom has always held a great draw for me. It’s where all of my favorite authors — Austen, the Brontë sisters and Coleridge to name a few — based the stories and characters that had taken me on my earliest adventures. Through their words, I felt that part of my heart had become woven into the English countryside and amidst the Scottish heather.  Up until my study abroad at the University of Strathclyde, I had never been abroad and what’s more, I’d rarely left my Southern cradle of South Carolina.  I was an enthusiastic French student but shy. I desperately wanted to see Europe but I didn’t feel confident enough in my language skills to venture into a fully immersive experience such as France or Belgium. These two feelings were at war within me — I wanted to go but I doubted my ability. It didn’t take long for me to realize I couldn’t wait another year to go abroad however. That’s why, my sophomore year, I decided to take my first step outside of the United States and into Glasgow, Scotland by studying at the University of Strathclyde for the Fall 2012 semester.

 

While studying at Strathclyde, I took intensive upper level Psychology, International Marketing and French translation and independent French study. All of my classmates were international; for the first time, I felt like a foreigner. When other students found out I was an American, they were enthralled. My French translation class was one of my favorite language classes I’ve taken throughout my entire college career. At the beginning of each class, we would present the work we’d done to translate an article that had been given to us at the end of the last lesson. Sometimes it was our job to translate from English to French, other times it was from French to English. Our professor stressed the nuances of translation and meticulously scrutinized our work for its voice — whether it stayed true to the original author’s tone. With my independent study, I would listen to the radio stations of different French provinces and read Le Monde in order to participate in conversation with other students and with my professor.

 

I lived in an on-campus housing apartment with five other roommates — another American, a German, a Swede, a Bulgarian and a Scot. Two of our downstairs neighbors were French and I found myself hanging out with them and my French-speaking classmates on the weekends when we would spend time practicing our French and English with each other. Being immersed in such an internationally diverse community was an amazing experience. Everyone had such different experiences and were so open to sharing. We made a habit of having big potluck dinners each month where everyone would bring a dish that they most commonly ate. It was amazing to see just how diverse our day-to-day diets were. I think that when you say “bring a traditional dish” you have constructed expectations and therefore you have a far less realistic representation. These dinners of ours were different but the diversity was no less obvious. Meat pies from Bulgaria, rich sauces from France, German spetzel, salmon and pasta from Sweden. The food was like magic — it facilitated the most stimulating conversations. People would weave in out of different languages because, as I found, nearly everyone outside of America is a polygot and practice makes perfect. When the topics weren’t focused on religion, politics or economics, it was quite interesting to hear how big of an influence American culture had on creating a common pop-culture ground for younger generations to traverse. Many of my international friends listened to the same artists I did and had read most of the same books.