Katie Cummins, ’25
The first time I studied abroad was for GLO’s 2023 Summer Spanish Language program in Barcelona, and I felt pretty great about it. I’d served my time doing the beginner and intermediate Spanish sequences throughout my freshman and sophomore year, and I’d become a bit of a CTA connoisseur. Surely I’d be able to navigate this place like gangbusters. But when my friend Autumn chatted with the taxi driver on the way from the airport to the residence hall, I didn’t understand a single word. That evening, I wandered around the neighborhood near our dorm alone. It was the first time I remember thinking, I am a mysterious stranger here. Not just unfamiliar with the streets the way things had been when I moved to Evanston freshman year, but fully out of place. I wasn’t scared. I wasn’t homesick. But I was becoming sharply aware of how much I didn’t know.
That summer was a blur of awkward attempts at conversation, learning how to navigate European city life, and slowly getting more comfortable with the feeling of not having my footing. My Spanish improved, but more than anything, I got better at existing in spaces where I couldn’t anticipate what came next.
The next summer, I went to Salta, Argentina, with the Global Engagement Studies Institute (another GLO program). The city was far smaller than Barcelona, nestled at the foothills of the Andes in the northwestern part of the country. I lived with a host family — Delia, Vibo, and More — who made me feel welcome in a warm and easy way. Delia and Vibo are major Friends fans, so of course I had to pull out the picture of David Schwimmer’s Delta Tau Delta composite I snapped at a party once. The four of us spent our evenings watching that and cheering on Argentina in the Copa América. By the time I left, I felt less like a stranger and more like I lived there, even if only for a little while.
While in Salta, I worked with a local nonprofit on sustainable development projects, and the slower pace of life made spacefor different kinds of conversations — about climate, politics, memory, and what people actually want from “sustainable” solutions. It was a different kind of education than I was used to receiving on the Evanston campus. Less structured, more relational and immersive. Less about arriving at the single right answer, more about sitting in the uncertainty with other people. In the space between theory and practice, I started to think differently about what change looks like on the ground.
Later, in September of 2024, I went back to the South American cone, this time on a Global Engineering Trek to Chile. Once more, I was back to feeling that earlier kind of discomfort — this time as one of the only non-engineers touring copper mines and lithium extraction sites. I didn’t speak the technical language (in English or Spanish), but I did ask a lot of questions. Maybe that’s become my default approach: pay attention, ask questions, don’t pretend to know more than you do. Being non-technical wasn’t necessarily a limitation — it just gave me a different vantage point. 
And then I went to Baku, Azerbaijan to attend the UN climate conference (COP29) as a member of Northwestern’s delegation. I was researching climate policy and just transition rhetoric. It was overwhelming — dozens of pavilions, endless panels, encountering people from literally every corner of the world. I wasn’t there to pitch anything or represent an initiative. I was there to observe, document, and try to understand what “climate justice” actually means when it’s filtered through different national interests, economic systems, and cultural narratives.
While they were all incredible, none of these experiences were perfect. I was exhausted more often than not. Sometimes I got things wrong, said the wrong words, or entirely missed the point. But I also started noticing how moments following disorientation were usually the ones where I was paying the most attention.
Going abroad did indeed make me more “worldly” and I could certainly produce a neat little list of takeaways. But, more 
than anything, it taught me how to be okay with questions. It made me better at being in the in-between — between languages, between disciplines, between assumptions. And I think that is where the most meaningful learning happens anyway.