Living Entrepreneurship Blog / Global & Multicultural

One Year Later…

This blog post was written by Education Abroad Peer Advisor, Shazeem Siddiqi ’18…

It has been a little over a year since I studied abroad in Accra, Ghana and that experience is still making an impact on me today. It helped me become a better problem-solver and more confident individual.

While being abroad, one lesson I learned pretty quickly was that things will go wrong. That was a fact I could not escape but I could control the way I handled those situations. Before going abroad, I used to get very stressed and frazzled when things went wrong. This obviously did nothing to help the situation. My travels forced me to become a level-headed person. I was able to calm myself down and think through all of the steps needed to solving the problem. These skills helped me when I was planning recruitment for Delta Sigma Pi. There were many moving parts but I was able to organize myself and not get overwhelmed. Whenever things went wrong, I did not stress out instead I focused all of my efforts on solving the problem in front of me. I envision this skill helping me in the future.

Last Fall was my first time in Africa and that scared me but I knew I wanted to do something radical if I wanted to change my life. Being in a new country for four months allowed me to grow thicker skin. Everywhere my friends and I went, people looked and stared not because they were rude but they were genuinely interested in us. This really bothered us but we realized that in order to enjoy our semester we had to ignore all of it. The level of confidence I had when trying to speak the native language in the marketplace is something I am so happy I brought back to Babson. Before going abroad, I used to be hesitant going to networking events because I was intimidated and unsure of myself. Now I look forward to those events because I believe in my skills and abilities. All of this development happened because I pushed myself to go abroad and I would go through the process again if given the chance.

 

Babson will be celebrating International Education Week (IEW) November 27th-December 1st! IEW is an opportunity to celebrate the benefits of international education and exchange worldwide. This is Babson’s 12th year celebrating International Education Week and we hope you will join us!