Welcome to my first installment of Study Abroad with Steven. Wow, that’s even more cheesy than anticipated. I just need somewhere to pour all of my amazing study abroad stories without any judgement of how much I talk about Europe and studying abroad.
The point of the cringeworthy alliteration above is that I want to share my experiences that I had studying abroad this summer, but there is no way I could ever encapsulate everything I want to say in one blog, so I will have multiple editions and highlight something each one.
Let’s introduce this whole thing: the program, where I went, for how long, what classes I took, all the basics.
I spent this past summer studying abroad in Paris, France with the Viterbi Overseas Program. Oh, what is this you ask? Viterbi Overseas is a summer only, Viterbi student only program that allows for engineering students to spend their summer in Europe taking engineering courses. Every year, the location changes, but the basic premise stays the same. Viterbi brings USC professors across the pond to teach USC classes (yay! Don’t have to worry about transfer credits). This summer, I took AME 310, Thermodynamics, and WRIT 340, a required engineering writing course. Classes are four days a week, usually 9-1, and are condensed into a 7 week period.
Logistics. Boom. So, where did I live? One of the best parts of this program is that we did not live in student housing. We lived in real person apartments scattered across all of the districts of Paris, so if we went to visit our friends, we would go on adventures and see parts of the beautiful city that would have been hidden if we all stayed in the same dorms.
What did this trip mean to me?
This trip meant the absolute world. This was my first time in Europe, and I was able to expand my cultural scope and be part of something completely different and seemingly uncomfortable at first. Throughout my whole experience, whether it was appreciating the true beauty of nature in Scotland, having my own solo journeys the whole summer getting lost in my thoughts, or building friendships that I will never take for granted, I kept on asking myself if it was real. It was very real, as you will come to realize in the next installments. Please, stay tuned. I will become the Muhammad Ali of storytelling.
Merci, au revoir!
