My freshman year, I was lucky enough to be part of the last orientation group of the summer, which overlapped the international student orientation. My first friends on campus were Zimbabwean, Ethiopian, Bulgarian and Jamaican. Through them I met others. Those friendships, and others I developed with other international students during the years, have shaped me as a person. They have also influenced my decision to pursue a career in international relations. By forming close friendships with people from around the world, my own global perspective has changed irrevocably for the better.

When I became an international student myself, studying in Ghana the summer between my freshman and sophomore years, I found a new home among people who were able to see past our obvious differences to the similarities beneath. Every morning I spent hours learning to play the djembe, a West African drum, and the djil, a wooden xylophone. In the afternoons, I learned dances from all over Ghana and West Africa. My teachers became my family: We shared meals together, we gossiped and we formed strong bonds of friendship. I was even nicknamed Selama, which was my host mother’s family name. By the end of the summer I had grown closer to my host family than I had to the other Americans with me. In those three months I learned more about myself and what I was capable of than I could have imagined.

Living alone in a different country, in a different culture, forces you to re-evaluate your own identity — what your priorities and values are. There is no guidebook to teach you how to adapt, how to be flexible, how to learn new skills or habits or how to adopt new customs and new ways of thinking about the world and your place in it: You have to figure these things out for yourself, and I believe studying abroad is one of the best ways to do that. I have immersed myself in international politics, Amnesty International, Model United Nations and in friendships that span continents. I believe there is real value in pushing past our comfort zones and experiencing life abroad, or getting involved in activities on campus that are international in flavor. Take a foreign language and imagine living in a place and attending classes in your second language rather than your first. Try new foods and attend performances by musicians and dancers from around the world. Listen to music from other countries and watch foreign films. In this era of globalization, we can’t afford to remain closed off from other cultures. We should embrace the chance to learn more about the rest of the world and to understand where we fit into the global picture.