On the last day of Chloe Fitzgibbon’s study abroad program, more than 10 people from the community she had met through school, her apartment building, dancing and rollerblading came to say goodbye.
Four months earlier, she had arrived in Santiago to find quiet streets and a nearly vacant student apartment building, worried that she would spend the semester surrounded only by other Americans.
“I had to make all my connections from the ground up,” Fitzgibbon said.
Fitzgibbon is a senior at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln majoring in journalism and Spanish and following a prelaw track. Through the University Studies Abroad Consortium (USAC), Fitzgibbon spent four months studying at Universidad Andrés Bello in Santiago, Chile.
Fitzgibbon’s end goal was to learn Spanish well enough to reach people affected by language barriers. Ultimately, this experience changed her ideas about journalism, work-life balance and her ability to connect with strangers.
When Fitzgibbon arrived during Chile’s summer break, she said the streets around her student apartment were quiet and few students were living in the building. The quiet surroundings made her worry that she would not experience the cultural immersion she wanted, she said.
“I was like, ‘Oh, my gosh, I’m not going to learn anything. I’m literally just gonna be on, like, a four-month-long trip,’” Fitzgibbon said.
She contacted a Santiago resident through a mutual connection and began intentionally meeting people outside her program.
Through connection with other foreign students, Fitzgibbon began to learn through her discomfort. She realized to get the experience she wanted, she needed to put herself out there.
In class, Fitzgibbon noticed that confidence when meeting others was just as important as the knowledge from the classroom. Learning would become immediately useful when she would walk outside and try newly learned Spanish at a restaurant with her friends.
“When I was just dropped into another country, I had to make the mistakes, because if I didn’t, then I just don’t get to meet anyone, or I don’t get to eat food,” Fitzgibbon said.
Meeting students and practicing Spanish were only part of Fitzgibbon’s effort to immerse herself in Santiago’s culture. She wanted to become part of the city and immerse herself in the city’s culture.
Fitzgibbon said rollerblading on streets closed to traffic on Sundays became one of those activities. On Sundays, the city of Santiago closed some roads to motor vehicles, allowing residents to exercise in the streets. Fitzgibbon once joined local skaters on a 12-mile route.
She said free Cuban salsa classes also helped her meet Santiago residents. As Fitzgibbon improved, she advanced to higher-level classes. She recalled an experience when she could not get a break, and others would keep pulling her onto the dance floor as soon as she sat down.
Fitzgibbon said that her experiences changed how she saw journalism. Working in news had sometimes left her focused on its inherently negative stories and viewing the world through a pessimistic lens.
In Chile, learning about a country that had endured so much history helped her see how some problems are reputative and how the fight for greater rights and freedom can fluctuate.
She also learned that countries and people cannot be understood in black and white. Fitzgibbon said news can make complex places seem simple, and that broad generalizations can create problematic perceptions.
Despite those challenges, Fitzgibbon said a world with access to independent, credible information is far better than one shaped by censorship.
Fitzgibbon also found a different approach to work-life balance. She said journalism can be demanding and difficult to leave behind after work, a feeling shared by people in the U.S. In Chile, she found hobbies accessible and often free or inexpensive, and she rarely saw people take their work home. The culture, she said, felt more oriented toward working to live than living to work.
Fitzgibbon still thinks about the members of the community she met during her time abroad who came to say goodbye on her final day in Chile.
“I honestly cannot believe that I made so many friends,” Fitzgibbon said.
Through hardship and her desire to grow, through trying and failing, Fitzgibbon offered this advice to students considering study abroad: seek an experience beyond attractions meant for visitors.
“Try really hard to be a local,” Fitzgibbon said.
For her, that meant learning about a place’s history and meeting the people who live there, rather than only taking photos or attending parties meant for foreigners. She said travelers who do not try to understand a place risk treating it as something to consume instead of a culture from which to learn. That awareness is especially important for Americans visiting Latin America because the region has a history of colonization and U.S. involvement.
