Why in the world is this little black girl, that’s majoring in sociology, wants to be a doctor, and is learning chinese- going to this little island that is 7,840 miles away from her mother?! Well fam, I’ll tell ya. It all started out on December 4th, 1997 at 5:52 am. A young queen was born. jkjk- But in all actuality, I am a sagittarius and I love to travel. I have been fortunate to do so throughout my life so it’s a regular thing that I do. Since I love to travel, I’d always known that I’d wanted to study abroad somewhere. I wasn’t quite sure where, with who, or for what, but I knew that I wanted to be somewhere that wasn’t America for a period of time in which I’d be able to grow and experience new things. When I was a first-year at Pitt and had fully commited to Chinese I had set my sights on the Pitt in Shanghai program. I had already been to both Changchun in Mainland China’s Jilin province as well as Beijing during my 2 week visit in 2012. I’d also heard great things about Shanghai so that’s where I decided I wanted to go. In Pitt’s study abroad office, they have a wall of postcards for several of the study abroad programs that they offer. So when I happened to be in the office, as a lesson through my freshman programs class, I grabbed the Shanghai postcard, and taped to my desk as a constant reminder and goal.

Fast forward to the second semester of my second year, I began to seriously plan my study abroad trip. I had applied for the Healthcare Delivery in Beijing Program as well as the Pitt in Shanghai Program. I’d also dug a little deeper into PittMAP (more on that in a minute). I decided to withdraw my applications for both of these programs because a 4/6 week program over the summer wasn’t going to be enough for me. I needed to be away for a whole semester. 5 straight semsters* of full time school and part-time work as well as plenty of life events in-between had worn me out. During my research for which summer study abroad programs I was interested in, I’d also conducted research for semester study abroad programs. I came across PittMAP. PittMAP can be primarily described as a public health program that visits 3 countries relating to the areas of study. When I was looking into it, the program was visiting Shanghai, Sydney, and Buenos Aires. It was perfect- especially for my strange combination of study. The public health part would teach me about health in different parts of the world, boom, pre-med hit. Since sociology is a huge part of public health, two SOC classes were included in the program’s course load. Boom, major requirements hit. Since I would be in Shanghai for a month, I would’ve been able to practice my Chinese, boom, Chinese hit. Unfortuantely bad things love to happen to me. I found out mid-summer that PittMAP was actually cycling through locations and were going to different cities in 2019. Even worse was that the planning for the new cities was a disaster, so even though they were changing it, nothing for 2019 was finalized for a reasonable price and the program wouldn’t even be offered in 2019. Time to find a new program.

“Why me?”

-Mid-summer stressed out Brittany

HOW IN THE WORLD WAS I GOING TO FIND A NEW PROGRAM? I had to fufill sociology major requirements as well as asian studies certificate requirements at the very least. I knew this would prove to be a difficult task so my adrenaline took over my social anxiety and pushed me to call the study abroad office so that I could talk to a real person about my current problem (a historically difficult task.) I did this and talked to Brice (assistant director) who suggested some programs for me to look into and connected me with Leslie (pitt recognized program adviser) so that she could help me out more. When I got to school I actually met up with Leslie and told her what I needed. She too gave me some programs to look into and connected me with people from different study abroad organizations that could possibly help me out. A few days after meeting with Leslie, I recieved an email from a representative for CIEE. He told me that Leslie had reached out and included a link of a program that he thought would satisfy everything that I needed. At first I was a little skeptical because the name was COMMUNICATIONS, BUSINESS + POLITICAL ECONOMY. First of all, the all caps is already alarming, and second of all, nothing in the title has anything to do with my course of study. However, upon further inspection, I learned that I had finally found my program.

*I did 5 semesters of straight school because I took 11 credits the summer after my freshman year even though I worked 25+ hours a week