SIT Study Abroad Reviews

If your goals for study abroad include:
-meeting people from your host country
-having substantive opportunities to practice a new language outside of class
-thinking critically about how race works in a different society
-doing a cool internship or volunteer thing in your spare time
-having the chance to take weekend trips or go camping
-forming close relationships with professors and getting letters of rec for fellowship apps
-any kind of academic rigor at all

DON'T DO THIS PROGRAM.

Classes are 100% lecture-based and given by a rotating cast of professors, which means you will hear the same introduction to the issues basically every day, never get a chance to form a close relationship with someone, or hear how the different themes the lecturers present are seen to relate to one another. The management actively discourages weekend trips and forbids volunteering and internships. When our methods class got in a fight after they claimed there was no racism against Afro-Peruvians, they managed to backtrack more or less, but told me afterwards that they normally try to avoid the topic of race altogether (in a program titled "Indigenous Peoples and Globalization"!!!!!). Their philosophy is that Peru and the USA are totally incomparable as societies, but also that we are somehow 100% capable of understanding deep and complicated issues within Peruvian society by taking cursory bus tours of indigenous villages and popping in and out of schools. They believe in Humala's consulta previa in the context of government negotiations, but doesn't believe in consulting indigenous subjects before writing anthropological observations of them. They believes in the left's proposals for intercultural bilingual education, but don't seem to care that their classroom is basically absent the intercultural part since there is no space made for connecting with Peruvians. I arrived speaking Spanish fairly well and so have had the chance to discuss some of my concerns with them but they barely give the time of day to people who struggle more with the language.

A side note: It is also very difficult if you get sick on this program because the staff is very liability-conscious and will make you follow the doctor's recommendations exactly, even though they are also aware that the doctor overprescribes. I stopped taking bronchitis medicine a few days early because it cost 13 soles a pill and was giving me hand tremors, and the director said they would send me back to the US for breaking the code of conduct. He also shamed me for being hesitant to waste so much money by implying that I was rich (the SIT insurance makes you pay for everything out of pocket and doesn't reimburse you till you get back). So far I have paid $186, which is over 600 soles, about a quarter of our month's budget for independent research.

The SIT Study Abroad program in China gave me the opportunity to interact in depth, in a meaningful way, with the local culture. Throughout the entire experience, you are engaging with local people. From day one, nearly all meals are on your own and you are given a stipend to find breakfast lunch and dinner at restaurants around the city. In addition to quickly improving in my basic language skills around food and money, I learned the stories of restaurant owners and learned to appreciate the incredible variety of food in this rather foreign culinary culture.

The assignments, especially in the Field Methods and Ethics seminar, get you out talking to people even more. One assignment focussed on learning one person's life history through interviewing in Chinese. I dove into the story of a hardworking couple from a small rice farming village in Anhui province who immigrated to Kunming to open their own dumpling store. Neither of they had attended middle school, yet they worked 6AM to 10PM seven days a week to support their son through college. Through that one interview alone I gained stunning insights about the mass migration of farmers to the cities and the incredible value parents place behind education in this country. And that was only a single project out of many more over the 15 weeks of the program.

The language teachers do an incredible job of preparing you for these kinds of experiences. Classes are super intense, with only a couple students per teacher. You fly through the material at breakneck pace and they keep you very busy. Yet language is the backbone of this educational experience, where the majority of what you learn comes from the local people themselves.

The assignments outside of the language classes are hardly conventional. Upon arrival we were given characters on a piece of paper and then told to find the place in the city and navigate back to campus--we learned life skills of how to navigate and survive in a Chinese city through immersion. These exercises started off small, in groups where we could rely on each other to accomplish the tasks. But by the end of the semester the task is much more daunting: live independently anywhere you choose in the country and conduct novel research on any topic that interests you. You work up to this point throughout the semester. You are given a week to travel where you please for vacation. You are asked to develop a miniature research project independently in a Bai ethnicity village during a week long rural homestay where the program staff are only a few kilometers away. But the whole time you must prepare for the Independent Study Project, where you will be on your own for four weeks. The program staff are there to help every step of the way, but they give you incredible freedom. This is not only about learning Chinese language and culture, it's about developing into a stronger person.

I loved the experience. It was one of the most intense three months of my life, and it was very, very stressful at times. Yet every day you are learning. I feel like I am more enlightened.

i really couldn't say one bad thing about my experience with sit in South Africa! it was really really amazing and the program did an incredible job of ensuring that we were given the opportunities to make the trip such a special and life changing one. I did the homestay and that part was a great way to get immersed in the people and culture within the township of Cato Manor. I learned how to cook with my mama, was exposed to the ways of living for both children and adults in this community, and was able to gain experiences that could never be taught in a classroom. Going out at night, meeting people our age and hearing of their lifestyles and interests was another really special aspect of the trip. I can honestly say that i have made life long friends from around the world as a result of my ventures out with other SIT students. The program and its structure constructed a great balance of learning about traditional zulu culture and history, in tandem with experiencing contemporary durban culture for young adults in our same place in life. The field based work was really special as well because we not only learned from the best professors in durban (which imraan and the team did a terrific job of scheduling for us) but we also were able to apply that learning to our observations in classrooms across the province. From staying in rural, tribal lands, to visiting prisoners and learning about other systems like the prison system, to going out with amazing people from around the world, to visiting museums and art galleries across different cities, to hearing from young and old students and educators, the experience really could not have reached a more vast and diverse range. I can genuinely say that this program was flawless in my mind.

A lot of people say that study abroad will change your life and it seems super cliche and silly. But this experience was without a doubt the best thing I did in my entire life and brought back to me some things that I had lost. I learned so much about tropical ecology and conservation and culture but also a lot about myself. We travelled around the country, saw so many different places and cultures and learned amazing things. We took the time to have fun and go on adventures on our free days and saw an unbelievable amount of beautiful wildlife. It was intense and absolutely beautiful. To anyone considering this program, do it. It was paradise.

My experience in Peru with SIT was more than I could have ever dreamed of. The program was structured so that I was able to experience the most amount of cultural immersion possible while traveling around Peru and learning about the challenges it faces in a globalizing world. I never thought that I would learn Quechua and live with an indigenous community on an island in the middle of the highest navigable lake in the world! I have made life long friends on this journey and created memories that cannot be gained any other way. I highly recommend this program, it gives you the opportunity to conduct field based research, become fluent in a foreign language, and culturally and politically explore another country.

When I got back from abroad everyone asked "How was it? Was Africa so much fun!" After making it clear I could not comment on Africa but could tell them about the places I had visited in Cameroon, I also corrected their notion of study abroad as "fun". Being in Cameroon was challenging, lonely, tiring, boring, far from home....and taught me so much about the legacy of colonialism that I have been benefiting from. Everyday I was witnessing something new and wrestling with it. This all sounds pretty daunting and cynical right? But I don't want to tell you I had this "amazing African adventure" or that now I can't wait to go back and work for some development organization. I left Cameroon with more unanswered questions than when I arrived. But I think this is GREAT! My host families were all unique and different, incredibly generous and welcoming, and humbly opened up their homes to me. I embraced being American for the first time while abroad, through coming to a better understanding of the culture I came from. I also saw a lot of strength and dignity in Cameroonian culture that was very different from where I come from and very different than the media portrayal we see of Sub-Saharan African countries. I would highly recommend this program to everyone. It does not try to make you a tourist but it also acknowledges that with your western-background you cannot fully assimilate into Cameroon, it's a good balance. A good challenge.

The program was at times disorganized, hectic, and frustrating. But the quality of the experiences you'll get, the things you'll learn, and the people you'll meet more than make up for it. The staff makes you feel extremely safe and supported, and everyone you encounter there is incredibly warm, accommodating, and accepting. My abroad experience was unlike any of my friends who went to Europe, Australia, South Africa, etc. Be prepared to feel a little uncomfortable, but I promise it's totally worth it!!

Studying abroad in Cameroon with SIT was one of the hardest and best things I have ever done. It’s one thing to learn about African political systems, it’s another thing to sit in the living room of one of the most prominent Cameroonian politicians and learn about how his career and country have been impacted by neocolonialism while drinking his tea. It’s one thing to learn about deforestation and displacement of indigenous peoples, it’s another to stand in a quickly disappearing rainforest in the pouring rain and talk with the Bagyeli people, see the suffering loosing their land has caused. It’s one thing to grow up seeing constant images of poverty and disease associated with Africa, and a totally different thing to dance the night away in a local nightclub with Cameroonian college friends who are a lot like you (but with better fashion sense).

It’s one thing to learn by reading facts and stories flat on a page, it’s another thing to learn by living. SIT Cameroon teaches you to learn by doing, and it will probably be one of the hardest and most rewarding risks you'll ever take.

P.S. After two years, I am flying back to Cameroon this week!

One of my favorite silly stories from my study abroad happened at a wedding ceremony I attended with my family.

During the ceremony which was about 5 hours long and in Luganda (so I’m not exactly sure what happened), many generations and family members danced and gave blessings to the groom’s family. About halfway through the ceremony, a stray cow walked in the back and ran into a bunch of the parked cars, setting off a bunch of car alarms. Apparently that’s normal, but my aunties found it hilarious that my friend and I were so amused. Someone eventually got the cow and tied it down, so of course we did what any normal American would do and took selfies with the cow in our traditional wear. There was also a crowd of village children that came to watch the wedding, but an even larger crowd showed up when they spotted the 2 muzungus wearing traditional attire. There might have been 50 kids watching us take pictures with a cow who crashed a wedding, which to them seemed absolutely ridiculous. The actual bridewealth part of the ceremony was so elaborate, with almost an hour of family members carrying baskets of gifts for the bride’s family. The gifts ranged from cases of soda, to fruit, to suitcases, to a lifetime supply of laundry detergent, some chickens, and even a cow. The gifts filled the entire room, and just as you thought the gifts were finished, ten more would come out. The ceremony was very different from anything I’ve ever seen in the US, but it was amazing to me the tradition that is preserved within the introduction. One of my aunties told me that after this ceremony, the marriage is considered valid in the Buganda kingdom, and some don’t even have an official wedding with a marriage certificate. Ugandans know how to throw a great ceremony!

Although I have spent much of my time studying Africa because of my interest in public health, I am now fascinated by the way Ugandans act and care for one another. Everyone is family, tied through the kinship that is humanity, and everyone who shows kindness receives kindness. The people here understand what it means to be apart of a community and the essence of hard work. I can say with great reverence that compared to most of the people here, I have not truly learned what hard work is because they have to put in way more work to ensure success than I do. This program will helped me to better understand a culture different than my own, take a break from the craziness of school and dispel some of the preconceptions people have about Africa.

Everyday was an adventure and this experience allowed me to learn so much about myself and where I fit into the world. If you are looking for an easy semester and do not want to experience any challenges, then this is not the program for you. But if you want to see the world from a different perspective, try new things, become more independent and have a life changing experience then this is the program for you. The combination of coursework and cultural interactions truly focuses on experiential learning. The SIT staff are wonderful and are with you every step of the way.

My experience with SIT Nicaragua was holistic, eye-opening, and intense. On an academic level, my classes were immediately relevant to my homework and day- to-day life, which made it easy to learn. The program gives students incredible academic freedom to demonstrate what we learn in creative formats, which allowed me to create a lot of art and media for my classes. In the program’s excursions to rural Nicaragua, the Caribbean coast and Cuba, we were able to learn directly from community members. The vast curriculum is designed to prepare students to complete an independent research project. Even though I was nervous for that project, it served to be one of the most rewarding challenges of my undergraduate career (I researched community radio on the Caribbean coast of Nicaragua).

With respect to my personal and social life in the program, my experience centered around my wonderful host family. The program houses all of its students in one neighborhood in Managua, where every evening the streets are alive with the sounds of family life. My own home was full of life—with siblings who wanted to talk with me about their dreams and take me out with their friends, and with a mother who wanted to take me with her 'a pasear' and feed me—a lot. They made me feel truly loved and supported throughout my experience.

I would recommend SIT: Nicaragua to any student ready to immerse themselves somewhere wonderful and complicated.