Recent Musings About India, Senegal, and College Life Coming to an End

It’s my last semester at TCU. In exactly 59 days, I’ll be leaving Fort Worth and not come back until graduation in May 2015. No, I’m not graduating early, just taking a May class and then off to India and Senegal for Summer and Fall. Why India and Senegal, you ask?

India: Going on a Critical Language Scholarship from the State Department to Chandigarh (north India) to study Punjabi. Yes, it’s very random, yes it’s also free. Here, I can learn a random language, well it’s the 10^th most spoken language in the world… and study human trafficking and have lots of adventurous, courtesy of all of the taxpayers in America. I just decided to apply and then somehow wound up getting this. So, I’ll be in India June 10-August 10.

Some fun facts (considering I spend too much time reading about it): The Dakah border with Pakistan is 2 hours away from Chandigarh and has a changing of the guard- type ceremony every night. Chandigarh is in the foothills of the Himalayas and really beautiful. It’s 3-4 hours north of New Delhi and is the cleanest, safest, richest city in India and has approximately 1 million people. My personal favorite picture I found, (looks like something off of pinterest) J

Senegal: I’m going to Senegal with CIEE, a partner program of TCU. Here I will take classes and study French. It’s kind of a stepping stone, first India, more developed, people speak English, then Senegal- not very many people speak English and less developed. More fun facts coming later.

In the upcoming blogs, I’ll talk about some small epiphanies I’ve had in the last 3 years of being in college.

- When I first came to TCU, I thought it was going to be radically different from high school. In some ways it was, in the culture and environment, it wasn’t (isn’t)

- Yes, many (most) of my favorite college memories have taken place outside of TCU, and I will never exactly consider Fort Worth a home. And yes, I’m okay with that.

-  No, I have not exactly had a “typical” college life, if there is such a thing, but getting to spend time on the cross country team, in DC, Haiti, India, Senegal, and only 2.5 years at TCU and working with professors is something I would never change.