From a David Brooks column, advising all those poor schmucks about to receive an insubstantial education at Harvard on how to make their Ivy experience count:
Spend a year abroad. Shibley Telhami of the University of Maryland believes that all major universities should require a year abroad: "All evidence suggests this, more than any other, is a transforming experience for students that lasts a lifetime."
This, actually, strikes me as quite correct. I graduated college in three years -- I knew what I wanted to do, and through the blog, I was already doing it, so it made sense to concentrate -- but my great regret is that I never spent a year, a season, a semester, or even a matter of weeks abroad. Everyone I know who did escape the country, even those who seemed least likely to benefit from it, came back, if not changed, then believing they'd changed, which is about as important. My theory, based on what I saw in my friends, is that periods abroad instill a desire to be world, cosmopolitan, erudite, tolerant. To be the sort of person you think spends periods abroad. So even if the actual era spent in London doesn't change you, the idea that it should've is more than transformative enough to make the experience worth it.
Relatedly, here's Gift of Gab, kinda-sorta rapping out my point:
I didn't have to be, given the gift to rip
I'll never master me, I know that it's from Him
or Her or It, dimensions that sit
Waitin' to sift through me, I fall short, still it hits me swift
I didn't have to see, I coulda hit the lick
I coulda drifted it quick, I coulda quit so quick
It's really a trip, I guess I was picked
I don't know what I did to deserve a ride like this (Damn!)
I didn't have to eat, I coulda been so thin
I didn't have to be, quoting these sentences
I didn't have to reap, the work put in but then
even the work in itself was such a blessin
I didn't have to see, the planet lip to lip
I didn't have to make, a livin' writ to writ
I didn't have to dream and then begin to live it
And for that, I vow to be a vessel
