Hi my name is Dannie and I’ll be going to Beijing, China during the spring semester of 2011.  I’m going primarily to improve my Chinese, but also to get a full China experience. 

People always ask me “are you excited to go”.  Strangely enough, the answer is always “no, it hasn’t quite hit me yet”.  And I reckon it won’t until i step out of Beijing National Airport on January 15th.  I guess a main reason why it hasn’t hit me is because this semester was so hectic.  On top of all the school work, the entire application process for studying abroad was quiet cumbersome.  Applying for scholarships was also pretty taxing.  But now that mostly everything has fallen into place, all my forms are in order, my plane ticket has been purchased, and I have selected my courses.. yeah, I’m a looking forward to it. 

What is your biggest deterrent for studying abroad?  Mine was probably cost.  In terms of credits, I came in with enough to graduate on time; I’m taking mostly electives abroad but I don’t mind.  I want to step out of my comfort zone and explore a grand world we live in, so that wasn’t the issue either.  But even the biggest reason against going to China has been resolved!  Praise God, I’m essentially going abroad for free, after all the generous scholarships I have been awarded.  For anyone seriously interested in studying abroad, I believe that this could be a possibility to you, so give me a shout out if you want to learn more about the Whole World Scholarship or the Gilman Scholarship. 

Isaac Newton was a famous physicist and mathematician.  However, despite his accomplishments and discoveries, he humbly says, “If I have seen further than others, it is because I stood on the shoulders of giants”. And in a lot of ways, I feel the same way too.  I feel as though despite my own reasons for doing things and for having goals, a lot of it was derived from people who I look up to.  As much as I want to take ownership of the Language Intensive Program at Beijing, it was John Cho who influenced me to do it.  Rediscovery.  Validity for something I think is not mine.  I couldn’t quite find it here, maybe I’ll find it elsewhere. 

Till next time,
Dannie Kim

Location: State College, Pennsylvania