Like Jennie, I took umbrage with some of the ideas artiulated in the Vande-Berg article. One thought in particular that made me scratch my head was that “students who are academically serious and socially mature – the ones who have earned good grades on campus and who have respected student conduct policies” will somehow be “transformed” based on my experience in Smith’s Global FLEX program to Saint Petersburg last year (Vande-Berg 17). Theoretically, students who were elected to go were the types of students that Vane-Berg describes – “academically serious and socially mature.” However, on the trip, half of the students essentially used the stereotype that Russians drink a lot to justify their going to clubs and bars every night was “cultural immersion.” I do agree with Tori that the experiential\/constructivist model, which puts more responsibility on the individual, is perhaps the most valuable. I think that study abroad is most valuable when students approach the experience with open-mindedness and a willingness to learn.<\/p>\n
An idea in the Bennett reading is his description of how many Americans “disavow their cultural affiliation” (Bennett 5). One time, I was talking to an international student at Russian Club and while we were discussing culture in general, she said, “America has no culture.” I knew what she meant because many Americans, as Bennett describes, see themselves as “mixtures of cultures,” but it seems to me that this denial of cultural ties isn’t an indicator of an absence of culture in America but rather, a part of American culture, and one that, I think, is important to consider when in America’s gradual shift from a more monocultural, “melting pot” model to a more multicultural model.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Like Jennie, I took umbrage with some of the ideas artiulated in the Vande-Berg article. One thought in particular that made me scratch my head was that “students who are academically serious and socially mature – the ones who have earned good grades on campus and who have respected student conduct policies” will somehow be […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1394,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-404","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-assignment-1"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.smith.edu\/becoming-foreign\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/404","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.smith.edu\/becoming-foreign\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.smith.edu\/becoming-foreign\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.smith.edu\/becoming-foreign\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1394"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.smith.edu\/becoming-foreign\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=404"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/sites.smith.edu\/becoming-foreign\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/404\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":405,"href":"https:\/\/sites.smith.edu\/becoming-foreign\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/404\/revisions\/405"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.smith.edu\/becoming-foreign\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=404"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.smith.edu\/becoming-foreign\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=404"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.smith.edu\/becoming-foreign\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=404"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}