Coming Home
There isn't one stand-alone memory from my semester in D.C. and the Balkans that dominates all the others.
However, there is one type of experience that meant more to me than any other this fall. This experience happened a few times when I was in the Balkans, and it changed me to an extent I haven't fully realized yet.
I'm talking about my experience conversing one on one with college students from that region; people my age, with similar dreams and expectations, who have one major difference - they grew up in a conflict zone. As young children, they had to hide in basements as rockets and missiles were being fired into their neighborhoods. As young adults, they have to try to carve out a future for themselves in a region that is still far from reconciliation and finding a stable peace. My conversations with Milan and Yelena in Vukovar, Sergei and Aleksandar in Belgrade, and Hanna in Novi Pazar have altered my ideas of justice, reconciliation, and war. Without talking to these people, my trip would not have affected me like it has.
I think this answers the second part of the question - if I think study away programs at other institutions are beneficial in a non-academic sense. Obviously, my answer is yes. I didn't talk to those people using academic inquiry, I talked to them like I would with anyone else. Our conversations left imprints on me that no academic setting or teaching would be able to leave. They are the faces I see when I think of that conflict, they are the hope for the future of that region, and they are the reasons I am interested in peace and conflict resolution. They are people like us, only they had to live through horrors I can't even imagine. And they will remain in my memory years after I have returned home from my trip.