In reading both chapters, I had thoughts similar to Jennie’s: as a student who has already studied abroad, I find the study abroad paradigms presented by Vande Berg and Bennett unnecessarily complex and involved in measuring student experiences. Like Jennie, I had not heard of Vande Berg’s study abroad program types or Bennett’s explanations of cultures; however, I find it difficult to imagine that knowledge influencing how I navigated the Danish cultural landscape. Personally, I did a ton of research into Danish culture before my arrival. Because my study abroad experience marked the first time I traveled internationally, I wanted to prepare myself as much as possible to experience the feared phenomenon of “culture shock.” The multitude of blogs I read, movies I watched, and music I listened to could not have prepared me for what I experienced once in Denmark, however. I still had to learn the Danish way through a trial and error process, and by speaking to the Danes themselves.<\/p>\n
Furthermore, I find the concept of testing a student to see if their study abroad experience meets some sort of cultural quota to be ridiculous. Each individual will find different aspects of a new cultural experience transformative.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
In reading both chapters, I had thoughts similar to Jennie’s: as a student who has already studied abroad, I find the study abroad paradigms presented by Vande Berg and Bennett unnecessarily complex and involved in measuring student experiences. Like Jennie, I had not heard of Vande Berg’s study abroad program types or Bennett’s explanations of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1395,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-406","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\/406","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\/1395"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.smith.edu\/becoming-foreign\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=406"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/sites.smith.edu\/becoming-foreign\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/406\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":407,"href":"https:\/\/sites.smith.edu\/becoming-foreign\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/406\/revisions\/407"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.smith.edu\/becoming-foreign\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=406"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.smith.edu\/becoming-foreign\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=406"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.smith.edu\/becoming-foreign\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=406"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}