<p>Here are some examples. I’m from the U.S. and I studied abroad in Amsterdam, in the Netherlands.</p>
<p>-Americans from suburban areas assume cars are essential to life. In the Netherlands, I realized that the reason we depend on cars is because our society is designed to make us depend on them. (I later learned that the auto industry contributed to that, deliberately making public transit fail and lobbying for the federal highway program.)</p>
<p>-Americans tend to be less environmentally focused than the Dutch - or at least they were in 2007. So I got a brand-new worldview on energy efficiency - things like using natural light instead of turning overhead lights on, making sure everything was off, taking shorter showers, using less water when washing dishes, etc.</p>
<p>-I learned how people from another culture viewed my culture and country. And because I traveled around Western Europe a little bit, I got to see the similarities in how we were presented abroad. They weren’t all good, so it made me think about how I could improve international relations in the future.</p>
<p>-You learn cool things to bring back. The U.S. doesn’t always do everything better. For example, I learned a lot about socialized medicine and universal healthcare. This was before the recession and quite a while before the recent debates about affordable health care - it hadn’t quite hit the news yet - so socialized medicine was still seen as an undesirable thing by many at the time. But hearing the Dutch discuss it, they just couldn’t understand why Americans would be averse to taking care of their own people and collaborating on a social safety net. It wasn’t even the self-serving “Well, what if something happens to you?” It was just the genuinely confused face and “…but they’re people. We should take care of them.” They honestly could NOT understand how an entire nation of people wouldn’t want to support their poorest, and thought Americans were kind of dumb for not realizing how the entire country would be strengthened by supporting them. The message was reinforced when I got really sick and went to the doctor - I wasn’t asked to fill out any forms or show any cards. I walked in, gave them my name, waited 15 minutes and then saw a doctor.</p>
<p>While I’d thought about these things on an abstract level, I’d never really thought about them in practice.</p>
<p>-I learned how to pronounce Dutch words! There are quite a few in English, especially in New York.</p>
<p>-I learned SO MUCH more independence when I was abroad. For example, for the first day of class they gave us a bicycle and were like “here’s the class on a map; find your way!” I lived on the outskirts of Amsterdam and my class was in the city center, so I had to learn how to get there on my own. It took me AN HOUR the first day. By the end of the summer, it took me 20 minutes. My legs were so diesel when I came back from Amsterdam.</p>
<p>My ONLY regret about studying abroad was not staying longer! I wish I had gone for a full year rather than one semester. Sometimes I also wish I had gone somewhere else - Amsterdam was not my first choice - but I really enjoyed where I went and it influenced me so much.</p>