cstubbe2794 (‘16) is a rising senior at Emerson College. In today’s post, she recounts her experiences taking time abroad during college. From taking classes during the week to traveling across Europe on the weekends, cstubbe2794 had a fantastic time. Read more about her program!
Emerson College is small, so the study abroad programs are limited. They have summer programs in Prague, Spain, Beijing, Shanghai, Austria, Greece, Los Angeles and Washington D.C. They also have a program in the Netherlands for a semester, which is the one I did.
![By Stevieled5 (Own work) [CC BY 3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0)], via Wikimedia Commons](https://www.admitsee.com/bloguploads/Kasteel_Well_Photo.jpg)
Emerson College owns a 14th century castle called Kasteel Well that they have restored to fit about 85 kids each semester. It is located in Well, Limburg, near the border of the Netherlands close to Germany, and is about an hour and a half train ride from Amsterdam. The students are there for 90 days and there are never any classes on Fridays, so you have three days to travel every weekend. There are two mandatory group outings, one in Amsterdam and one later in the semester, depending on when you study abroad. In the fall, it is a trip to Berlin and in the spring, it is a trip to Madrid. The last trip is always right before a travel break, which is a week off to travel anywhere you wish.
I visited Munich for Oktoberfest, Bruges, Brussels, Tangier, Oslo, Berlin, Cologne, London, Paris, Porto, and of course, cities and villages throughout the Netherlands. It was an incredible experience that taught me how to be more independent, how to think quickly on my feet if something went wrong in a foreign country where I did not know the language, and how to be more of a traveler and less of a tourist.
The classes that I took were just the right amount of challenging while still giving me time to enjoy traveling. I ended up with the highest grades I had ever had up to that point in my college career and it made me realize how much better I do in my studies when I am kept busy and forced to budget my time wisely.
If you go to Emerson, I highly recommend this program. After all, when else would you ever be able to say that you lived in a castle?
Did you study abroad? Hit the comments section below to tell us more!
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