What is one piece of advice you'd give future students traveling with your program?
Taylor: I would tell students to take advantage of all the opportunities available abroad that are provided by the University of Edinburgh and Arcadia. My university’s International Student Society organized trips around the country to places like St. Andrews and my abroad provider set up a Ceilidh in Stirling for all the students in Scottish Arcadia programs.
Opportunities like this are really amazing and get you out and about to see different parts of the country and experience the culture. Arcadia also provides things like a ScotRail card and Historic Scotland card, which I definitely took advantage of while there.
We got reduced fares on all rail services and free entry to historic sites so I was able to travel around Scotland and ended up seeing about 15 different castles and palaces which were all incredible! I recommend taking full advantage of everything the Arcadia program provides because they gave me things I would never have thought I needed or would be useful.
Did you run into a language barrier? Did you ever think you knew more/less of the language?
Taylor: I chose to study in Scotland because I had not taken foreign language classes in years and I needed to take all of my courses in English. I didn’t think I would have a single problem with the language, but I was definitely wrong. While everyone did speak English, some accents were very difficult to understand. I found myself asking people to repeat themselves more often than not at the beginning, and having to listen very carefully to what was being said.
I found myself asking people to repeat themselves more often than not at the beginning, and having to listen very carefully to what was being said. One of my professors was especially hard to understand, but other students must have been in the same boat as me because they also asked the professor to repeat himself over hundreds of times during the course of the semester. After a while it definitely gets much easier to understand the different accents, but don’t be surprised if it takes some getting used to.
How has this experience impacted your future? (Personally, professionally, academically, etc)
Taylor: This experience definitely made me want to become a world traveler. I had never really been outside the U.S. (minus a few trips to the Caribbean with my family) and now I feel like I need to see and experience everything the world has to offer. I plan to do much more traveling and want to get a graduate degree and/or work abroad in the future.
This experience also made me realize how many people there are in the world, each with a different story and it is amazing to hear what other people have gone through and their life experiences. I have definitely become more open-minded as a result of traveling abroad, and I think that meeting many different people will positively impact how I will work with others and approach things in the future.
Describe your favorite must-have food that you tried abroad.
Taylor: I tried many of the well-known Scottish foods like haggis, neeps and tatties, Irn-Bru, and a Scottish breakfast, but my favorite place was a small, hole-in-the-wall shop called Moratti’s. It is a tiny, bright red shop that was only open at night and all of my friends would head there on our way home from a night out to get their garlic bread pizza.
The guy who worked there was so sweet and would always ask about our night as our pizza was being made. If you are on Holyrood Road you should definitely stop in, I recommend it to everyone!
Do you think your program changed you as a person?
Taylor: I definitely think my program changed me as a person. I feel more accepting of people and want to hear about their life experiences and learn from what they have to say.
I also feel the need to explore everything around me, and take advantage of what opportunities the world has to offer. I hope to spend parts of my career and/or gradate school both back in Scotland and around the globe, which I never would have imagined myself doing before this experience.
I also have become much more independent as a result, and I feel that I can do anything I set my mind to. Studying abroad was a life changing experience and I would recommend my program to anyone who wants to study abroad in the future.