That sounds a little dramatic, or maybe pessimistic, but it’s quite the opposite. Paris made me stumble again with something I thought had ended in Bogotá last summer, but it also pushed me to take action and change it.
So you might not be a completely different person as soon as you step outside the airport, but the new city you go to will show you yourself from a different perspective, through others' eyes. And, as cliché as it might sound, if you are brave enough to see it, you will become a different person — breaking whatever must be ended, and strengthening what has been hidden.
From a less deep and existential, but still important, dimension, studying abroad is a great academic opportunity. I’ve always found it amazing how you can tell the difference in how professors from various cultures teach, or how teaching works in the French system compared to the “exchange” system, which is different as well. For me, it has been especially interesting to see how an American teacher teaches, for example, U.S. foreign policy versus how a French teacher does. That is something we don’t usually notice when we’ve been studying in the same place for a long time. But things do change when you are in a French university, and it’s not only the teachers’ accents. From the way a person teaches, you can tell part of their background, their beliefs and get a glimpse of the environment in which they were raised. Of course, all teachers are professional, and they don’t give political opinions in class, but part of the beauty of teaching is that who you are will always go with the lessons you teach, and that is a gift we receive in every classroom.
