A good first travel experience

I had never traveled outside of the U.S. prior to attending this program. I absolutely loved my experience. This program offers the perfect mix of academics, fun, and adventure. I feel like I learned a lot more about conservation, humans in relation to the environment, and how to conduct environmental research. I came in with some hard science background, however, other people had a great time without that background. I would recommend that you only do this program if you are really interested in research and learning about different ways of doing science. There is definitely a huge social science component, which I really liked as an anthropology major. We were given the opportunity to engage with local communities. It was a challenging program is some ways and pretty fast paced. I felt like the time flew by because there were so many activities and places visited. It is really fun to get to see the different parts of Panama. I want to go to Panama. The program does a really great job of connecting you with local researchers and professionals. I loved the freedom of doing my own research project. As well all the staff are super helpful, supportive, and overall wonderful people. Our academic director was great. If you are worried at all about bonding with people, don't, you get to know people very fast and spend a lot of time in the group. Overall it was an incredible experience, that definitely affected my perspective and has impacted the way I live my life now.