Like many students at Villanova, studying abroad is on the bucket list for my college experience. Fortunately, with the resources offered at Villanova, studying abroad not only adds to my college experience, but my professional development as well. In my search for more information on studying abroad, I attended a First Step Information Session. Here, I met with Kyle Pace, an advisor at the Office of Education Abroad. Mr. Pace briefly summarized what studying abroad consisted of and went over the simple requirements I would need to fulfill before I could be considered for any study abroad programs. We discussed the reasons why I am interested in studying abroad, which was beneficial to me as it inspired me to reflect on why studying abroad is important to me. I was thrilled to hear Mr. Pace’s responses to my reasons for wanting to study abroad. He not only assured me that the experience would fulfill my desires, but added that the trip could potentially give me ten fold the benefits that I sought.
To conclude our meeting, Mr. Pace and I spoke about the program that compels me the most: the Business and Culture section of the Italian Context program. I learned that the trip takes place in the second semester of sophomore year and the only academic requirement to participate in the program is the maintenance of a grade point average above 2.75. This excited me because I knew that by that time, I would have gotten fully acclimated to Villanova and will therefore be comfortable with leaving for a full semester. I expressed my excitement to Mr. Pace who assured me that I would not lose my sense of comfort at the university during my time away.
As you can likely already gather, Mr. Pace is caring, supportive, and clearly wants to make the experience of studying abroad as enjoyable as possible. In addition to being unceasingly honest in his advising, he made the meeting about studying abroad very brief and kept things simple (which I appreciated). For these reasons, I highly recommend making an appointment with Mr. Pace and attending the First Step Information Session.
https://www1.villanova.edu/villanova/provost/abroad/process/firststep.html
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