Author: Andrew Letsch | Major: Physocs, Astronomy & Physics | Semester: Summer 2024
Look Mom! I’m At The Olympics
I chose to study abroad in Greece because it seemed like the natural choice to pick based on my interests and majors. I think it’s so funny that astronomy and philosophy (and a ton of other sciences) were founded and created in Ancient Greece! I was only there for about half of the summer semester, and it was so fascinating to see my career aspirations and hobbies where they started out in the minds of the people who started it. And let me tell you, if you ever want to feel really dumb, just check out the science these guys were doing way back when. It absolutely blows my mind the things the Ancient Greeks were able to accomplish with the resources they had. Seeing what I can barely manage to do with the resources I have developed such high admiration for the people who started it all. So yeah, I really love Greece, and that is why I picked it. Such a rich culture with so much history and passion. (And I would be lying if I said that my childhood obsession with the Percy Jackson books played no part as well).
Academically I absolutely loved my program abroad. I studied at the American College of Greece and I got to take two classes about philosophy, called “Business Ethics” and “Philosophy and Cinema”. Since I have two majors back in Arkansas, sometimes it is difficult to split my time and my passion evenly among the two subjects, especially since physics can be so demanding, and so to have a summer that I just got to kick back and relax and just study philosophy was really nice. This is not to say that my classes were easy, far from it. The college I went to used the British grading scale, and this essentially means that a 70 and above is an A, and everything else is shifted down accordingly. Now, this sounds easier but they grade way harder there. I remember on one of my midterms I only missed one component of one question and ended up with a 70 as the grade on that test. So, they don’t mess around in Greece when it comes to academics, the grading and content was very difficult. But I absolutely loved the content of the classes, and the students from all the different countries of the world were so fascinating to work with. Seeing how each culture interacted with education differently was so interesting and getting to partake in it was so much fun every single day.
One of my favorite memories about the whole trip was when my program decided to travel to Mykonos for one of the weekends while we were there. Planning this was quite stressful, because people began to plan for the trip far in advance, before our spring semester had even ended actually. So trying to move out and schedule an island trip with people I hadn’t even met yet was pretty stressful, but once we got there it was so beautiful. One thing we learned immediately on Mykonos is that there weren’t any ubers (that were reasonably priced), and there weren’t any sidewalks either. So guess who walked up a big hill across the roads of a foreign island in the pitch black? To be honest, it was still a fun experience. On our way up to the airbnb we even accidentally stumbled upon the wrong house, as we were walking up we just heard these huge dogs start barking and running towards us. That was scary. Thankfully the dogs were owned by one of the sweetest guys I’ve ever met and he talked to us and showed us how to get to our house.
Later on during the next day on our Mykonos trip we decided to have a beach day, so we pretty much just lounged on one of the most gorgeous beaches I’ve ever been on. I did put on sunscreen and reapplied quite a bit, and in doing so I thought to myself, “I can probably get my back” and totally thought I did. And, I totally thought wrong. So even now I’ve got a pretty bad Pangea-shaped tan line on my back. So if the Sun Bum sunscreen company ever wants an advertisement that sunscreen works I’ll just send them a picture of my back.
Truthfully, if I was able to keep writing about my experiences this would probably be a whole book long and I wouldn’t want that so sadly I have to restrain myself. All in all this was such a life changing experience, in so many ways. Academically, culturally, socially, and so much more. I learned that I wanted to study abroad from my job of talking to alumni, and all the honors college alumni had the same advice, “Study abroad, it will change your life” and man, they were so right. I will remember this experience for the rest of my life. And probably also remember how dumb the Ancient Greeks make me feel.