A year ago today, I was wandering around the Amsterdam airport, waiting for a delayed flight and giggling in a jet-lagged way at the Dutch word "doof."
Like almost half of Duke's undergraduates, I spent part of my junior year as one of a peculiar breed: The half-tourist, half-immigrant mongrel known as the American student abroad. Compared to friends in, say, Botswana, I had it easy. I went to Scotland, where, except for my cab-driver, who talked like a drunken Viking, the people speak English and the chances of being gored by a charging wildebeest are remote.
Still, the culture was so different that I often felt like the proverbial fish out of water. My attempt to use a duvet cover as a fitted sheet, for example, is probably still giving my Irish roommate hysterics. And in a university where Americans and Englishmen vastly outnumber Scots, local resentment at being co-opted by a horde of Yanks did not make my life any easier.
Despite this, going abroad was one of the best things I've ever done. Spending time overseas gave me a fresh perspective on world affairs, broadened my educational horizons and forced me to become more independent.
But for readers uninterested in my personal development - and I suspect that's most of you - it also gave me a more relevant, new perspective on Duke University.
It is no accident that juniors who go abroad in the fall often have difficulty re-adjusting after winter break. The trouble isn't just getting used to the fact that nobody here knows what "mingin" means (Scottish slang for "nasty or disgusting"). It's also realizing that in some respects, Duke will never measure up to the foreign university they just left. In a few cases, it can't. For students who visited a major cultural center and attended world-class operas every Friday night, Durham is going to be a huge letdown. But sometimes, there is no obvious reason why Duke is not as dynamic as the overseas non-Gothic Wonderland. It simply isn't, and that is enough to break a returning student's heart.
For example, my foreign university's location has all the disadvantages many Dukies attribute to Durham. It's isolated, there is not much to do beyond the university and town-gown relations are not the greatest. Yet somehow, they maintain a vibrant cultural and intellectual life outside the classroom. How?
Like Blue Devils, many students in Scotland consume massive quantities of alcohol. For some reason, though, their drunken exploits involved less trashing of commons rooms and more debating imperialism with equally trolleyed English professors and Members of Parliament. To me, this indicates that our administration's alcohol blame-game is a gross oversimplification. But if beer is not the reason for Duke's anti-intellectual culture, what is? I can't answer these questions. But if I hadn't gone abroad, I couldn't even have asked them. If more of us had a chance to see an alternative model of college life, maybe the entire campus could begin to find some answers. It might also help us appreciate the many things Duke does well.
With that in mind, I'm going to make a radical suggestion. I think studying abroad should be mandatory. Exceptions could be made if family obligations or a restrictive curriculum (C2K, anyone?) keep a student from leaving, but they should be just that: exceptions. Finances wouldn't be a problem, since going abroad often costs thousands less than staying at Duke. The Study Abroad people aren't supposed to talk about that, though. Who knows, students might begin to ask what $35K a year really buys.
As long as I'm dreaming, I have a few suggestions about where students should study, too. Ayn Rand fans should go to Latin America. There they might see that no matter how brilliant and selfish a man is, he cannot pull himself up by his bootstraps if his government makes sure he never has boots. Marxists should study in North Korea, because it might teach them why people outside la-la-land don't think communism is a good idea. The guy at Blue Devil Days who told me he was just here to party should go someplace snobby and academic. I'd suggest Oxford, but that would be cruel... to Oxford.
Finally, Faran Krentcil should go somewhere aggressively unfashionable. I'm thinking Siberia. Because you know, that reindeer-hide shoulder bag is so last season.
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