Opinion piece by Abrar Salhoba, Staff Writer

April 1st, 2020

As any student around the world, the current global pandemic coronavirus sweeping every nation has affected our mobility , comfort and university lifestyle. This means transitioning onto online classes , having to deal with writing papers and taking exams while ours brains exerts itself in juggling our mental health and GPA upkeep . Personally I would have wished for all universities around the world to cancel this semester and start anew in Fall but of course that’s out of the question as education must go on. I’m currently a junior to become a senior next fall and just as I would hate to be delayed a semester I’m sure everyone else would too and for that reason I don’t elaborate on my wish of cancelling the semester or supporting it. However, I reminisce on this wish of mine as a semester abroad student so that I might have redone my semester abroad that’s been unfairly taken away from me. Let me provide background before delving into this deeper. 

I’m a student from the American University of Beirut majoring in Political Science in an American based curriculum largely concentrating on American politics. Therefore deciding to have my semester abroad in America was personally a no brainer , of course I was going to go to the land of the free , experience the American dream not in any university but the one in which the first American president built. The University of Pennsylvania was created before the declaration of independence and built by Benjamin Franklin. Another cool plus? Donald Trump the current president also graduated from it and actually being there and having the student newspaper of the campus The Daily Pennsylvanian refer to President Trump as Wharton graduate whenever they reported on him was beyond amusing . The political scene the University of Pennsylvania provided and applying the knowledge garnered from my home university to it was a constant game of fulfillment as I would recall what course taught me this piece of information . 

I’m a huge advocator for semester abroad’s they stimulate an academic experience entrenched in culture and interacting with a new society. If your choice of institution and destination is based on something specific such as learning the language of the place or because the institute specializes in a subject you are keen on than the information received has the tinge of specialty for the simple reason that you travelled there for it specifically. Furthermore , semester abroad’s allows you to critically enhance the skill of comparison , an important tool to utilize . In my courses of Comparative Constitutions and Comparative Politics the act of comparison both professors emphasized was what led to growth .  It leads you to pinpoint weaknesses and strengths you would have otherwise overlooked and it’s a skill of adapting ideas elsewhere into different environments. There you compare how similarly or differently professors conduct classes in your host university , curriculum depth and the different resources available to whom. Moreover you also get to observe how different geographic areas affect education. 

Going back full circle I am grateful for getting to go to Penn even though it was only half the semester and we must all make painful sacrifices to our routines for the survival of each other.