Me posing in front of the La Fortuna Volcano in Arenal Volcano National Park

Author: Will Walker | Major: Psychology | Semester: Summer 2023

There were many reasons I decided to spend half my summer in Costa Rica studying at Veritas University in San Jose. The two classes I took in the program were “Intermediate Spanish I” and “Health and Psychology”. Both of these courses were very beneficial to both my degree plan and to my learning experience to go to medical school and become a physician. My Spanish course, which was completely taught in Spanish, was required for my degree. However, there was no better way to learn Spanish than in an immersion environment like in this program. Not only was the course intensive, with 3 hours of class time 5 days a week for 4 weeks, but part of the program was living with a Costa Rican family in a homestay. Spanish was always spoken in the homestay, which gave me plenty of opportunity to practice my Spanish practically and with a kind and encouraging family that allowed me to learn from my many mistakes and make a ton of progress toward mastery or fluency. My Health and Psychology course was also very beneficial to my knowledge for my future career. I obtained a degree elective from the course, but I also learned a lot of useful information about treating psychology in healthcare. Costa Rica is very strong in mental health treatment and has one of the lowest rates of depression in the world. It was very helpful to learn about the many psychology disorders and methods of treating them from a former psychologist who was the professor of this course.

Both my professors were very kind, approachable, and made a real effort to form a personal relationship with all their students even in the short time we had in these courses. Classes at Veritas were quite different to those at the University of Arkansas. Both of my classes were about 10 students. This made it much more discussion based than most lectures at Fayetteville. Another huge difference was that, like most education in Costa Rica, there were no exams, and most grades were given based off class participation and presentations. I liked this style much better because I felt like I could focus on learning and understanding material without stress of missing certain questions on exams.

My favorite part of the program were the experiences I got to have at night and on weekends as I explored San Jose and the rest of the beautiful country of Costa Rica. Most weekends, my friends at the program and I would take a bus to an interesting tourist destination and spend 2 nights there exploring everything they had to offer. We went to beaches on both the Caribbean and Pacific coasts, explored a town and national park of an active volcano, and spotted some incredible wildlife in the rainforest. There was so much delicious food of both Latin and Caribbean origin, amazing sightseeing nature spots, and entertaining animals to watch, such as sloths and white-faced capuchin monkeys. My favorite weekend activity was zip lining in Arenal Volcano National park, which had the highest zip line in Costa Rica at over 1 mile in the air.

I would absolutely recommend this program to anyone, especially those that need or want to learn Spanish. I feel like I learned more Spanish in 1 month than in the previous 20 years of my life and being able to practice every day boosted my confidence in speaking a second language tremendously. Before the trip, I wish that I had known that there was so much more things I wanted to spend money on than I was prepared for, so I was really running low by the end! The first thing I did when I returned home was buy a chick-fil-a sandwich and relax in my nice air-conditioned home (there is almost zero air conditioning in Costa Rica at all, despite it being >85° every single day!). Overall, I loved the experience and it gave me so much excitement for the next time I am able to travel abroad.