Before I arrived in Argentina, I envisioned my abroad experience as being a vacation with a transcript, a cultural immersion experience, and good times all around. I was worried that it would be difficult to have a fullfilling academic and personal experience in a completely self-structured environment.
How wrong I was. After only one month, my experience in a direct-enroll program has been the most amazing–and the hardest–month of my life, and is something that I would trade for little else in the world.
First, let ´s make one thing very clear: my first month here in Argentina has been anything but a vacation. To the contrary, it has been the most difficult and tiring experience of my entire life. There is almost nothing more mentally draining than the rapid cultural immersion that such an experience entails. One day, I ´m in the states with my family. The next, I ´m in a hotel with other study-abroad students. Two days later, it ´s just me and my monolingual host family. The next week, classes start at the university.
At night, it was quite difficult to sleep. The combination of the new language, culture, and politics amped up my brain to unforeseen levels. I was chronically tired, both from lack of sleep and from the mentally work of immersion in another language and culture. It has been anything but easy.
But, none of this is to say that I have any regrets. To the contrary, it has been, and will continue to be, one of the most rewarding experiences of my life. I ´ve formed a sizable group of Argentine friends, several of whom share my extremely unorthodox political views. I have another 5 months with them and whoever else I meet along the way.
The classes I am enrolled in are nothing short of amazing, and in many ways are very similar to liberal-arts courses. Some of them could easily be Whitman classes if not for the Spanish and the substantially smaller price tag.
Of course, my experience is not reflective of the Argentine University system as a whole. I can choose my classes; Argentines have almost no flexibility. Many of the classes offered are mind-numbingly boring. Strict major requirements are deeply entrenched in the university system, and it is something which the students are constantly fighting to change.
And of course, none of this is to say that my experience is universally reflective of direct-enroll. I could easily make this into a vacation with a transcript, and I would bet good money that many students do. That ´s the beauty of direct-enroll: it ´s what you make it. The independence and personal drive required to have a fulfilling experience is something that only a complete lack of structure can provide. Never in my life have I felt so completely and utterly alone. Not in the sense that I have no one to talk to or no one willing to help me. But alone in the sense that I am facing a set of challenges that only I alone can tackle. It is an experience like no other.
