The Woman With All The Answers

(There are no pictures to accompany this post, but it took me a while to articulate my thoughts. Please bear with me, although I acknowledge this is a long one.)

Wednesday was International Symposium Day. I would bother to explain why I got up at 7AM on a day when classes were canceled to attend a bunch of presentations in windowless rooms. But Symposium Days are an important part of Beloit. That may seem overstated as they are just one day out of each semester, but I sat through six consecutive symposiums today that touched upon the role of the AIDs pandemic in various African nations. I went to one talk on shadowing a Peace Corps worker in El Salvador and one on organic farming in Germany. None of these students had an easy time going abroad, but what my friends learned enriches our entire campus. Each of these students comes back with an understanding with depth and color that you can't get from in any classroom. That’s the practical reason we bother with Symposium Days. Plus, sharing is fun.

And now I move on to the inspiration for the hyperbolic title of this post: Carol Bellamy. Carol Bellamy is a big deal. Click the link. Read up. She’s got a mighty impressive résumée. Ms. Bellamy attended several of the symposiumsI sat in on today, spoke with our Model UN club, and gave an open lecture on the need for Global Citizens to round out her visit to campus.

She's the kind of speaker who makes you want to change your course of study. I'm not saying I'm about to hop over to the Registrar's Office and change my major to International Relations. At very least, she made me certain that I will go abroad twice. I've been waffling. I've been reconsidering choosing France (as it is a stable, developed nation)-- and she touched upon this as well. Ms. Bellamy cited statistics about study abroad on the global level. In the US-- less than 1% of students (approx. 200,000 annually) go abroad during their undergraduate experience. I'm proud to say just under half of Beloit students study abroad before they graduate, contributing a couple hundred to that annual stat. Let's face it: the NY Times article I linked above runs along many of the same lines Ms. Bellamy touched upon and states them more artfully than I might. To follow this train of thought, click away.

If all the prospective students could have heard her, you would understand why I live on the border of southern Wisconsin over a thousand miles from my family and friends. It would make sense that I want to double major is French and any field that will land me solid communication skills.

In a way, I came here to leave this place. I am comfortable here. I love my friends and my classes and my Beloit Life (shameless, I know). I could have loved my undergraduate experience at many colleges if I chose to, but I remember reaching a point in my college search where I realized that coming to Beloit would push me and provide the motivation to become the a "global citizen." Studying in France is outside my comfort zone and a sizeable hop over the language barrier. Studying in Senegal would be out of my league entirely. So, I'm going to do it. I'm doing it because Senegal is not a country that has the same level of respect for women and their health as the US. I'm doing it because it's likely that I won’t have many more opportunities to choose to live in this kind of transitional climate again in my life. Getting perspective is what we're here for.

I was leaving Pearson's Hall on my way to Middle College for work last night and John Burris, the president of our college, held the door for me on my way out. It was all I could do not to turn to tell him how glad I was to have heard that speech on my way over to talk to prospective students. Some nights, loving this place makes this job a piece of pumpkin cake with cream cheese frosting (alla Commons).

In conclusion, when it’s windy on the quad or your visa application makes you want to turn on some Sufjan Stevens and crawl under the covers for a week, a Beloit student has to keep a wary eye on the Student Activities Board in case some amazing person might be on their way through Beloit who will remind you why you ever left home.