Why did a choose Whitworth?
One of the question I have been asked the most
and for which I actually don’t really know the answer myself.
First of all, if you didn’t do so before, I’d advise you to read more about my E&OR program at Maastricht University, so you can learn more about what led to this choice.
Basically, choosing an exchange destination is completely different from choosing a holiday but at the same time it's kind of the same. You need to decide a country from anywhere around the world to go spend some time and you hope you’re going to be comfortable and leave the best time of your life.
The list of partner university of Maastricht SBE is really long, which is great because you can go anywhere but absolutely doesn’t help in making a decision. Therefore, I had to find some criteria…
First, I only speak French and English and I absolutely didn’t want to learn any other language, so I eliminated all the Spanish speaking country or any of that kind.
Then I don’t like too much sun, it is “sweating”, I faint, everyone is always tired, and I would literally burn. So, every southern country was eliminated. With this criterion, I eliminated Singapore, which is the main destination of the econometrician and all my friends. I’m sure I would have had a wonderful time with my (nearly) entire class in Singapore but the constant 28° and AC wasn’t for me.
I was mainly left with the US, Canada, and northern Europe (Australia is way too scary because of the spiders and snakes). US was always my goal/dream but at the same time I wasn’t sure I wanted to go because it looked too obvious, childish maybe. I wanted to go live in a movie which is not a really good reason to choose the place that is probably going to change your life. So, I researched, and researched again. I read the “study abroad essays” from people in the US, Canada, Norway, Austria, and every beautiful place I saw…
Then I found it, I just felt it in my gut, I’d say, this small place in Washington state (Grey’s Anatomy here I come) where you can experience a real US life, a real campus with dorms and nearly no international students so you can only meet real Americans, born and raised in the US which probably have never even leave it. And icing on the cake, Alcohol prohibition: no need for me to say no every time we do something with friends. Nothing to worry about legal age in the US and for me, an easy way to find friends who would want to do something else than go to a bar to hang out.
So here I am, after more than a quarter of this experience and still completely in love with my choice of Whitworth, maybe there were better place, more adventurous, more interesting, with more people. But at least, I know my choice represented me quite well and I’m kind of proud of that!