By Annalise Grueter
I didn’t study abroad in college. Instead, I spent three months in the woods playing “escape from the technological world,” similar to Henry David Thoreau (but more on that another time). I had dreamed of living in another country before then, and dreamed of it again after. But it took another seven years before I even explored another country solo.
In late 2022, I finally made good on that overseas aspiration. I’m now 17 months into the adventure of being a student auslander in Germany. When taking this kind of leap, one expects to learn unexpected lessons. But of course, the journey always turns out to be richer and more surprising than anticipated.
I’d like to think that living here is increasing the depth of my empathetic capacity. It is bar none the scariest thing I’ve ever done (and that’s a list that includes climbing up glaciers and steep narrow tongues of snow and extraordinarily chossy high alpine rock).
I’ve felt pro-immigrant ever since I thought about the topic long enough to develop an opinion — probably sometime in my teens, I don’t specifically remember. It’s one thing to objectively support the opportunity for people to move to nations other than where they were born, for whatever myriad reasons. It’s quite another to understand, viscerally, how it feels to find an apartment, open a bank account, complete the required bureaucratic hoop-jumping — all without mastery of the language, nuances of the local culture or a strong support system.
Forgive me if this sounds privileged: I’ve come to think that form of understanding is as invaluable as working in service or retail for a time. There is a degree of patience and grace that is developed when you’ve stood in the shoes of hoping that a translation app isn’t missing crucial contextual details, or the embarrassment and fear that comes from being turned away from a bank for having the wrong ID to open an account. Try attempting sentences in your new language and being laughed at or misunderstood because of your accent.
My master’s program is called Social Transformation. We examine the concept via the fields of politics, philosophy, economics and leadership. I find myself wondering, how could we, humanity as a whole, increase and incentivize exchange programs, not just for privileged teens or young adults, but for whomever was so inclined to apply? Less like Peace Corps and more like a study or work exchange, but for six to twelve to twenty-four months rather than just three, with an emphasis on the trickier parts of immigration and integration.
Would something like that further increase cross-cultural understanding? Compassion? Might it finally break the English-speaking nations of our bizarre, irrational pride in monolingualism?