Four Life Changing Months at Altitude

This program was challenging in the best sense of the word. If you are a fan of the liberal arts model of education--one that strives to challenge innate assumptions and preconceived notions of the world through critical study of complex historical and contemporary realities--this program is for you. While the program is topically and predominately about the geopolitics and the modern political condition of the Tibetan people, Isabelle Onians (the director) uses this specific material to produce a learning experience that expands and complicates one's conception of nationhood, citizenship and cultural identity. Isabelle's lectures are brilliant and reveal a deep learning and whip-sharp intellect that she gathers together and unleashes on the small classroom in surprising and inspiring ways throughout the semester. Participation was less mandatory than irresistible. I would consider Isabelle's teaching some of the finest in all my years as a student, and still, several years later, think about how her course shifted my thinking.

Additionally, I gained a profound insight into the lived experiences of a people who I had previously only read about, or could have pointed to on a map but did not know in any real or meaningful sense. I had been abroad a small amount as a teenager with my family, and though I followed international events and cared about global politics, I had never before so fully felt a witness and a part of the world not as an American, or a millennial, or a college students, or even a political activist, but as a person.

I saw what were hands down the most beautiful landscapes I've ever encountered--before and after. I ate fantastic Nepali and Tibetan food, and studied a difficult and foreign language. I gained an insight into Buddhism as a lived practice and not merely a philosophy to be studied by college students, scholars and Western-atheists. And I made friendships with my peers, my teachers, and with local people that I still hold dear to this day. This past year I went to one of my co-SIT student's weeding; I still maintain, four years after my time at SIT, a deep correspondence with my writing advisor from the program. I feel a better, wiser, more empowered and engaged person as a result of my time with SIT in Nepal, and have not ceased to be grateful for my experience there since I left.