Meagan's Reflection

As a student, it is easy to enter an environment with the intent of learning, as we are already in the mindset of focusing on what lessons we can learn from an experience. It can be difficult, however, to extract the scholastic mindset away from who we are as individuals and allow the experiences to affect us as humans. To do this, we need to be able to be willing to learn, and let what we’ve learned change us in a way that makes us more knowledgeable, and understanding to others and different environments. We need to look at both the positive and negative, and allow both to affect us, such being enamored by the magnificence of the Roman Coliseum or watching families of poor Gypsies beg for their livelihood. While we may not be able to affect the things that are in our new environment, we need to allow it to affect us and challenge what we think we can do.

Traveling to Italy allowed all of us to experience a completely new culture, and challenged us to learn how to handle ourselves in different ways that provided for our safety and increased our knowledge about more than what we could have learned in a classroom. We were able to personally look at history and watch history unfold before us, while you can plan on observing the former, the latter is an unplanned glory. Allowing your senses to be overtaken by the onslaught of new stimuli can only increase the potential that we as humans have, and by doing so, broadening our expectations in life. Traveling beyond the world that we have become accustomed to always affects us, if we allow it to. It’s only through the lowering of our anticipations of the trips outcome, that we are able to experience the gift of traveling and the expanding knowledge that comes with it.]