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Concentration: English
Class Year:  2012
Email Address: sfrench@fas.harvard.edu

I am Harvard’s No. 1 fan. I came all the way across the Atlantic from my native England to study here and I think it is a wonderful place to go to college, but there are some things it just can’t give you that a study abroad experience can.  Before I set off on my 6 month adventure in Buenos Aires I spoke to several students who had done the SAP Argentina program in the past. After all, I was anxious; I didn’t like the idea of giving up my junior spring to spend half a year in this far-flung place I had never been to before so I decided to canvas some opinions, and when I did I heard a bunch of different answers: it will be “a riot”, “a challenge”, “an amazing experience”, “a lot of steak”; and it was all of the above – and more.

I studied at three different universities, two public and one private, with both foreigners and locals, learning about subjects as disparate as the Argentine urban poetry and international human rights violations. I lived in the home of a family of three in the heart of Buenos Aires, eating (lots) and sleeping (little) as the Argentines do. I travelled down to the rugged mountains of Patagonia, up to the tranquil wine country of Mendoza, and across to the astonishingly different city of Santiago de Chile, all the while exploring the vast metropolis that is Buenos Aires. Studying abroad in Argentina for a semester  allows you to grow in ways simply not possible at Harvard.

By the end, I had truly lived in a city and culture unrecognizable from Cambridge, Mass. and learned so much from it. Certainly, it was tough at times; I had to adjust to different food, weather, people and a new way of life but emerged a more rounded person for it. What I now realize is that in studying abroad you are not giving up a semester at all because it represents a tremendously rewarding experience where you develop in a way not possible at Harvard – and have an awful lot of fun in the process!