Study Abroad Student Blogs

I’ve been home for about two weeks now, and in the meantime, I’ve quickly reintegrated into my normal Northwestern student routine of taking some summer classes and working in my research lab, but I still think of our South African adventures every day. So, in the wise words of Hamilton’s as King George, “what comes next?” My transition back into my life at Northwestern has been so fast that I feel I’ve barely been able to reflect on our trip so far, and I’ve been struggling to think about how to move forward with my experiences in a meaningful way. It’s easy to reflect on our trip in terms of the crazy adventure activities we did or how much we learned in our classes and what tourist sites we visited, but it’s been much harder for me to capture what I experienced and make it a part of my life from this point on.

Sunset on the Garden Route

Other than continuing on with my professional interest in medicine and global health, I’m not entirely sure how to incorporate what I learned in South Africa into my life. I think that many people treat these experiences as eye-opening and life-changing events that make them more grateful for what they have, and don’t get me wrong—it certainly was eye-opening. But I believe that the goal of this experience was not to feel sorry for the people we met living under harsh circumstances but rather to understand their culture and learn about the entangled determinants of their conditions and how previous attempts to fix them have failed. Our professors often joked that it would be our generation to help solve all of these problems, and this may or may not be the case, but either way, I feel a strong aspiration to fighting for equality in terms of health care and social justice in South Africa, where so many issues they face are the same as those here in America, and I hope that my life will involve something that will keep me connected to South Africa.

Hope to see you soon, Cape Town!