Program Reviews

The Field Program is awesome!! I would highly recommend it! There is a lot of moving around and traveling the country, which is a great experience! It is four weeks of constant travel in a Prado with two professors and the students. You will participate in various sociological and biological experiences that vary from super exciting and awesome to terribly boring. The majority of the time is very fun and exciting! But it is important to remember that this program requires a lot of flexibility and willingness to try new things. Overall this is a great program and I would recommend it without hesitation.

The Internship Program is great! As long as you are in an internship that you enjoy and are busy with it will be a great program. There is a lot of down time so is important to stay busy. It is mainly important that the internship you are participating in is what you want because it would be a very dull experience otherwise.

ICADS is a unique study abroad experience that combines both the typical classroom setting with hands-on/field experience. The first 5 weeks of the program I took a 4 hour Spanish class every morning and a 4 hour social studies class in the afternoon (with an hour lunch and breaks). For the social studies class, there were often guest speakers or trips to local community organizations. We also took a week long trip to Nicaragua. The next 5 weeks, the field students took their learning to practice. Every week we traveled to a different region of Costa Rica and conducted a variety of activities including: measuring wild life in a river, exploring the impacts of eco-tourism, bird watching, learning about different agricultural systems, and much more! This part of the program was an awesome opportunity to see almost all of Costa Rica while still being engaged in academic thinking. During the last 5 weeks or so of the program students had to propose and conduct and individual research project. I looked at oral health practices in a rural community located in the Talamanca mountains. In all, I really loved the fact that I got to live with more than one host family (as it gave me the ability to meet more locals); I got to learn both inside and outside of a classroom setting (a lot of travel was integrated into the program); and I was able to tailor the program to my academic interests (there is a lot of freedom in what you can do for the individual research project). It was great!

I think the beauty of the internship program at ICADS is that it leaves the cultural training wheels on just long enough that, when you're basically on your own, you succeed more than you ever thought you could. However, like riding a bike, the training wheels stage isn't nearly as fun as it looks. Culture shock, at least for me, was a real thing, which made my first couple of weeks less pleasant. At times, I even wanted to go home. I think this had to do with the bugs in my bathroom, knowing no one when I arrived, and having trouble, at first, building relationships because of language difficulties. ICADS helped with this though, through really flexible and interesting language classes, excursions into San Jose and San Pedro to get our bearings, and even skits that clued us in on ways that Costa Ricans greet each other, which might be the most important tool for building relationships here!

Things got a lot better during the internship. I worked in a medical clinic north of San Jose, to which I commuted every day. It was an amazing experience. I rotated among different departments in the Clinic every week, like nutrition, the emergency room, the pharmacy, etc. The employees of the Clinic were really good to me! On my first day, I forgot my packed lunch, so the nurse I was shadowing that day took me to her sisters house for lunch. They fed me and introduced me to her sister's son, who was around my age, my first Costa Rican friend. Near the end of the internship, a group even threw me a surprise birthday party. I learned a lot and made some really great friendships. The things I learned was less hands on though. My role was basically to observe and help only with tasks that I knew how to do.

I lived with a really kind, funny, and supportive Costa Rican family in San Jose, Costa Rica. They did not speak English, and were very accustomed to communicating with students who are struggling or beginners at Spanish, which was helpful for me even though I am not a beginning speaker. For the first five weeks I walked to the ICADS program center to take intensive 4-hour Spanish classes with a class size of four or five students. This was my favorite part of the program. Our Nicaragua trip in the middle of these five weeks took me out of my comfort zone, but it really prepared me for the issues I'd be working with for the rest of my time in the program. For the next eight weeks I tutored in English at a children's soup kitchen in an impoverished neighborhood in Costa Rica. Here I had a loose structure to work with; kids of all different ages and levels in English came in at random times for unpredictable lengths of time, and I had to ascertain what their tutoring needs were and how I could fill them during the time allotted, sometimes with twenty kids who needed help, sometimes zero. This was the most rewarding part of the program, and I made lifelong friendships with the soup kitchen staff and all the smart, kind, funny kids at the soup kitchen. The big drawback to the program, which I've heard other participants speak of as well, is that during the internship there is a feeling of isolation. All your ICADS friends are scattered all over Costa Rica and Nicaragua. I especially felt isolated because I had a hard time connecting to my fellow ICADS students. However, these feelings did not stop this program from being one of the most important academic experiences of my life, and I suspect that this isolation from other English speakers forced me to form deeper connections with my host family and the children I was working with. I am so glad I did this program, and I would recommend it to anyone. This was a huge building block in my personal and academic growth. Thank you, ICADS.

The Spanish classes were easy, but very helpful in brushing up on the basics before being sent off into an internship where you're obligated to speak Spanish all the time. The language barrier was at times frustrating, but being able to finally have a real conversation in a foreign language and working using only that language is a triumph that builds your confidence in your Spanish skills and in your ability to reach out and try new things. My internship was incredible; my bosses were very understanding of my limitations and strengths, so I always had a job to do that was both important and doable.