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FALL 2017 DAVIS SCHOLARS Magali De Bruyn FALL 2017 DAVIS SCHOLARS Magali de Bruyn Current email address: [email protected] Home country: Belgium College/university attending: Minerva Schools at KGI (Class of 2022) Courses taken during SAS: Global Environmental Politics, Issues in Hispanic Culture, Special Topics In Psychology: Intergroup Relations To be able to travel around the world for four months on a ship that is both a university and a home with a full scholarship is an extraordinary opportunity. I am therefore, firstly, very grateful for this privilege. Specifically, I have enjoyed discovering cities for which I have little expectations and leaving amazed, knowing I would like to come back. This was the case for Yangon; most of what I knew about the city was limited to the Lonely Planet guide, Wikivoyage, and news about the Rohinga crisis. The intricate yet harmonious mix of cultures I encountered in Yangon therefore very pleasantly surprised me. I wish I could have captured my delight at seeing barfi, ladoo, and many other Indian sweets in a small store on my way to the Sule Pagoda! Through this specific experience and countless other ones, supplemented by readings and many conversations, I have developed an understanding for the five countries visited so far that I would never have otherwise at this time. I am looking forward to sharing this new knowledge with peers after my voyage. While my in-country experiences have given me specific insights on places around the world, the days spent between ports have offered me needed space to reflect—on everything from my current experience and my time at MUWCI to my identity. Though many questions remain unanswered; I am grateful they have been raised. Many of these questions and reflections root themselves in ideas put forward by members of our community. Specifically, I am inspired on a daily basis by our faculty and staff. I look forward each day to the evening seminars, meetings, and conversations (usually around the table) where they share some of their experiences and knowledge. On the other hand, I have been disappointed by my classes. While the faculty heading them seem to have a very interesting background; I have not found the classes as engaging. For my Issues in Hispanic Culture class, I expected we would cover contemporary problems in Latin and South America and consequently have a hard time finding (personal) relevance when we only cover Spain’s history. Meanwhile, the monotonous lectures in Global Environmental Politics and Intergroup Relations pale in comparison to the experiential learning in the ports. While I currently find the lectures in my classes to be disengaging, my Semester At Sea experience has definitely brought me great learning overall. Thanks to it, I continue to increase my comfort with the uncertainty of travel as well as minimalism. Moreover, I am realizing MUWCI (UWC Mahindra College) has allowed me to develop a diverse palate—in each port, I find myself in love with the food! I consequently find five days in each port to be far from enough time, not only to indulge in the flavors, but to immerse myself in the places. For these reasons, I wish we could spend more time each country. This wish becomes accentuated when I reflect upon the environmental impact of this ship. As someone who cares about our planet, I struggle ethically with my participation in a voyage that sends 40 metric tons of heavy fuel into the atmosphere each day solely for transportation. By confronting me to this and other dilemmas associated with travel and studying, Semester At Sea has been a thought-provoking experience. I very much appreciate how the voyage has encouraged me to think about my role in this world as I discover some bits of it. Joana Sophia Virág Zubor Current email address: [email protected] Home country: Germany & Hungary College/University: UWC Robert Bosch Courses taken during SAS: Archaeology and the Public, Cultural Geography, Global Studies & World Interdependence Current Global Issues (Focus on the World’s Oceans and the Law of the Sea) Semester at Sea so far has been more than just an eye-opening experience. Whether it is the realization that people who do decide to spend a whole semester on a ship on the open ocean do unfortunately get sea sick or how the first actual culture shock I experienced was not in country but the second I would step onto this ship. Overall, I have made more memories and learned so many more lessons than I would have ever expected, which I am incredibly for, but I guess my favorite has been so far, the relationships I was able to build. At first it was hard for me to socialize with the American student body because often I would have the impression that they had a certain kind of superficial kindness that I did not know how to react to. However, over time I started to open up more, especially through my classes and now my closest friends are mostly from the American student body. Because of them, I learned that when I meet someone and they would say “Hi how are you?” or “Hi, what’s up?” it was not meant as a conversational starter, but rather a friendly acknowledgement of my present. On the counterpart, I was able to share a lot of my culture with them, for example that we kiss cheeks back home in Hungary and that it was not a weird, exotic thing to make fun of, when they would see it in Spain. Generally, conversations like this were the ones, when I felt that I am in the right place. These conversations when I could share my knowledge with others and at the same time learn something myself. One main mission that I have put myself on so far has been the one to explain to people the impacts of exoticism. Till now for example I have been called five times exotic, both by professors and students, based on my cultural background, which is German and Hungarian. At first, I was shocked when they would use that kind of description for a, for me at least, not extremely different culture. Hence, I would start a conversation trying to get their reasoning, which turned to be completely harmless and was meant rather to point out the uncommonness of it than to insult it. From thereon I was able then to explain how the term was a harsh word to describe my background, as I do associate it with human zoos that were present till the mid-20th century, where especially people of black skin would be advertised as “exotic”. Also, the term creates a hierarchy between “us” and “them”, them in this case being the foreign, weird, not as valuable as “ours”. After explaining it the people I would talk to would then try to change their perspective and vocabulary around me and even around others. This was great to see, as one student who was asked to describe Ghana would only come up with the word “exotic”. The professor who called me before the same, would then come up to the student and ask her what would make the country exotic to her and what would be other, more detailed, terms for her to use to describe the country. When I overheard their conversation it made me incredibly happy how the people were willed to listen and actually even would start questioning concepts that seemed so normal to them before. Another highlight of this voyage has been disconfirmed expectations concerning the countries we visited. As a UWC student, I had a roommate from Myanmar, who would always share a lot of the stories she experienced back home and create a certain image of the country in my head. From her stories Myanmar was an extremely religious, developed country with a lot of spicy and rather diverse food. However, after visiting Yangon and going from there to the South for the rest of the time I came to realize, that this was mainly applicable to the capital city. Not so much for the rest of the country. I came to see the scars of colonization of the British, as well as the Chinese influence on the local cuisine. Also, how littering was much more a problem, than I would have expected it to be. This was an incredibly valuable experience for me, as I started to realize, that having been a United World College student before, has opened up my mind to become a questioning, openly critiquing and more globally aware individual, but nevertheless still created certain single stories inside my head. Therefore, having now the amazing opportunity to visit the countries my friends grew up in and would tell me stories about, are now becoming real images, smells and emotions, that are not necessarily always confirm with the stories I had been told. Despite all the positive experiences I have had on the ship, such as the friendliness of the people, great mind changing conversations, as well as eye opening experiences in the countries, the program does certainly have certain issues that should be addressed and dealt with. One of them would be the dominance of a certain group of people on the ship. The majority of the student body comes from a white and rather privileged background and till now often had not been exposed to issues such as poverty or violent conflicts. Consequently, they often do judge very quickly over things that are foreign to them. So even, if we as international students try to talk to individuals, we will not be able to reach everyone.
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