“So, how was India?” they ask me, smiling, unaware that their well-meaning small talk has just thrust me into an impossible position. Try as I might, I have yet to find a way to condense every breathtaking, and confounding moment of my five month study abroad semester at the University of Hyderabad into a thirty second elevator pitch. How can I impart to my curious ambusher that my life in India was so much more than curries, Bollywood music, and festivals of colour? There was also struggle, disorientation, boredom, and homesickness, which all impacted my experience in crucial and meaningful ways.

If I had to choose one moment which best encapsulates this magical combination, it is this: a few weeks into my semester, I signed up to go on a day trip to the Nagarjunasagar Dam with an club on campus. It was to be an eight hour day trip which would return in time for dinner. Twenty-three and a half hours, two dance parties, a sing along, a missed ferry ride, an animal sacrifice, and no dinner later, I was still packed in the bus with 30 other equally bedraggled students.

At the peak of my miserable exhaustion a girl turned to me and asked “So what do you think love is?” I was astounded, and I considered telling her to leave me to sulk in peace. Instead we had an earnest conversation about our different perspectives on love, family, dating, sex, my queer identity, and arranged marriage. It transpired with the kind of delirious honesty that can only be fostered on a sweltering bus in the Indian countryside at 4 AM. I learned more about gender and community in India from that conversation than I did in my courses at the university. I had stumbled onto a nugget of pure travel gold: knowledge and understanding I could never have absorbed from a book.

My long interest in global topics has lead me to aspire to the global specialization through SUMMIT, courses with a global focus, and study abroad. I believe that by expanding our  understanding of “community,” and embracing the concept of global citizenship, we begin to combat the “us vs. them” mentality which stands in the way of justice, both locally and internationally. This is what drives me to want to explore global learning as a potential career path.

I know that I will continue to be a lifelong traveler. I want to guide other people to unlock the atypical but rewarding approach to travel which has the potential to be transformational. I know that these nuggets of travel gold are not handed to you in a coconut at a beach resort, they are uncovered by intentionally unseating yourself in the unfamiliar. To quote a piece of art on the rooftop of my dorm at the university, you have to do what you are afraid of. I wish to inspire others to excavate their own nuggets of travel gold: making connections, seeing the value in discomfort, and destabilizing their understandings of the “best” way to do things or exist in the world.