As my time at the University of Lincoln comes to an end, I thought it would be appropriate to reflect on the motivations that led to me applying to partake in an international exchange. There are of course many different things that go into making a decision to live in another country for an extended period of time, but I think there were three big factors that pushed me towards this experience. These were the want to travel around the United Kingdom and Europe, trying a different cultures schooling system and finally the influences I found through social media.
I’m Canadian, which can make it very difficult to travel because of the vastness of our country. I have been very fortunate to have parents that have given me the opportunity to explore different parts of the world, but I still was very drawn to the idea of an exchange because of the easier access to European travel. I wanted to experience other cultures and compare them to my life back home. I thought it would be good to challenge myself and try something new and exciting, taking me out of my comfort zone. I would have to make new friends, navigate a new city and be comfortable with living in a new culture and I thought that would be an exciting challenge. Our brains get used to seeing the familiar things in life and travel can be a way to change this and experiencing different cultures can make us more open mined by making us realize that something simple can have multiple meanings, which can help with problem solving (Lehrer, 2010). I certainly found this to be the case from my time in England. A great example of this is the different cultural meanings of some words. For example, French fries in Britain are called chips, which is the Canadian/American name for crisps. Now I did know this before I arrived but it’s a simple example of how something can have multiple meanings.
My second motivation was the thought of experiencing a different post –secondary education system. I wanted to see what was different about sitting in a class in another country and seeing the different ways they learn. I was actually surprised with how many differences there were between the University of Guelph and the University of Lincoln. The biggest surprise was the fact that attendance was taken for every lecture. Obviously professors in Canada encourage their students to attend class, but there is no metric data tracking the amount of classes that a student participated in. The other big difference was the smaller amount of assignments in the United Kingdom. This was the first time I had a class that was graded on one paper, which can be a very daunting and stressful task. It was also the first time that I’ve never had an exam at the end of the semester. Back home, there are usually one to two midterms, an assignment and a final exam so the grades are broken up between multiple evaluations. There were aspects of both systems that I enjoyed. I actually like the attendance because it made me feel bad if I missed a class. I do like the assignment structure of back home. Having all your marks on one assignment is much more stressful than having the grades split up over multiple evaluations.
The final and probably largest motivation to go one exchange was the influence of social media. In my third year, I was on the fence on whether I should apply for an exchange or not. I ended up not doing it, but knew some other friends and a family member that applied that year. I ended up seeing all the pictures of their adventures in other countries on Facebook and talked with some of them about their travels through messaging apps and they told about their experiences and I ended up regretting not applying. This motivated me to apply for an exchange in my fourth year (In Canada, an undergraduate degree is 4 years instead of three). Once I’d been accepted, I started to look at where I wanted to travel in my time on the exchange. I used sites, such as TripAdvisor, so I could look at the reviews of the places I was interested in visiting. There are many different uses and motivations that come from Internet use when one is travelling. One study that was conducted to find the different kinds of Internet users in tourism, which were the troll (manipulating and deceiving), the activist (raises awareness of issues), the socialite (status seeker), the social critic (engages with multiple others without thought on issues) and the information seeker (tries to obtain information) (Mkono and Tribe, 2017). So, in the case where I looked at info and pictures on TripAdvisor and Facebook, I was an information seeker.
Ultimately this has been an incredible trip and experience that I will always cherish and remember and I’m very thankful for the motivations that brought me here.
References
Lehrer, J. (2010) Why we travel. The Guardian, 14 March. Available from https://www.theguardian.com/travel/2010/mar/14/why-travel-makes-you-smarter [accessed 14 May 2017].
Mkono, M. and Tribe, J. (2017) Beyond Reviewing: Uncovering the Multiple Roles of Tourism Social Media Users. Journal of Travel Research, 56(3) 287-298. Available from http://journals.sagepub.com.proxy.library.lincoln.ac.uk/doi/pdf/10.1177 /0047287516636236 [accessed 14 May 2017].
University of Lincoln (2010) Alumni. Lincoln: University of Lincoln. Available from https://alumni.lincoln.ac.uk/page.aspx?pid=431 [accessed 14 May 2017].
