NOVEMBER 2006 :: ON CAMPUS

Away, Away and Up
On Campus, and Studying Abroad, With Vanessa Van Petten

By CAITLIN J. NORIS
Special to The Wall Street Journal Classroom Edition

On her 21st birthday, Vanessa Van Petten spent time with her friends and sipped chilled champagne. The happy celebration was interrupted only by freezing wind gusts, the sound of yaks grunting and chest pains caused by breathing oxygen-thin air at 20,000 feet above sea level.

Not a typical birthday celebration for a college student, but then, this wasn't just another day on campus. Vanessa was on the second leg of a junior-year study-abroad program that took her to Australia, China and, eventually, Camp 1 of Mount Everest in Tibet.

"I'm not a hiker. I'm not a climber. I'm athletic and I run, but I'm not a huge camper," says Vanessa. "It scared me, but it was the ultimate challenge. It seemed like I could do anything if I could climb Mount Everest."

Vanessa's journey began 7,000 miles away and two years earlier on the campus of Emory University, where she enrolled in a beginner's Chinese language course. "Chinese was the second class I walked into as a freshman," she remembers. "I couldn't even say hello in Chinese." Eventually, though, she became confident enough to choose Chinese and international studies as her majors. "I not only fell in love with the language," she says, "but I really started to like the culture, because it was so different from my own."

Hip-Hop Thesis

When the Chinese department approached Vanessa about writing an honors thesis, she chose an unusual topic: Chinese underground hip-hop. To conduct her research, she first traveled to Sydney, Australia, during the first semester of her junior year at Emory to take Asian-studies courses and meet with English-speaking Chinese researchers. Then, she traveled to China in the spring for research and additional coursework at a university in Shanghai.

There, she found an academic environment very different from the one she knew in Atlanta. A typical Chinese dorm might have eight people in one room. And the students are "all about school," she says. "The universities are so competitive to get into because there aren't that many universities and they are all state-run." Since school is so important, Chinese students party a lot less than Americans, she says. Another major difference she found is that Chinese students don't get to choose a major. "Kids take two examinations in high school: The first examination is to get into college, and the second examination tells them what their major will be."

With much greater freedom to explore, Vanessa took classes such as Asian Film and Fiction, Basic Chinese History, and Indian Philosophy, which were taught in English. "Classes are really important because they give you a structure to your day," says Vanessa. "But in China, I learned more walking to class on the street than I did in the classroom."

After class, she went club-hopping to research the Chinese hip-hop scene for her thesis. "Trying to get in with the Chinese gangsters to interview them about my thesis was one of the most interesting experiences," she says. "When I say 'gangsters,' I mean totally fake gangsters," she adds with a laugh. Vanessa says the Chinese rappers' lyrics are open and raw but very different from rap lyrics in America. She discovered that underground Chinese rap is often about love, admiration of hip-hop as a musical form, and dealing with the monotony in everyday life; however, she adds that Chinese hip-hop sounds just like ours. "They even steal some of Jay-Z's beats and rap in Chinese with their own lyrics," she explains.

Vanessa describes study abroad as a life-changing experience that gave her a global perspective. "There are a lot of orphans there who don't have enough to eat," she says, "I'm very thankful for the things I have now." She says she experienced a "reverse culture shock" upon returning to see the excesses of American life.

Vanessa says she also was surprised to experience discrimination when she was abroad. Chinese shopkeepers would often overcharge her, assuming that she was rich because of her nationality and race. "It made me realize how people see us and it changed my view of myself," she says.

Rough Terrain

But Vanessa points to her Mount Everest trek as the moment she knew study abroad had changed her. She almost didn't go because she was scared of altitude sickness or falling during the hike. Conquering the mountain-and her fears-involved a long plane flight to Tibet, four days traveling over rough terrain in an SUV, and a treacherous climb up the freezing mountain. The best part, she says, was coming down off the mountain and feeling a strong sense of accomplishment. "I did it, even though everything was stopping me."

Vanessa recommends that students interested in going abroad get their mandatory coursework out of the way early on, so they can fit in a semester or two of study abroad and still graduate on time. They should also start researching scholarships and saving money months ahead of time, as a study abroad can involve higher costs than staying on campus. The college study abroad office offers information on countries, programs and possible side expeditions, and advice from upperclassmen who have returned from abroad can help you determine which programs are worthwhile.

Studying abroad is a tough step for many students, because of the prospect of stepping into an alien culture all alone, without family or friends from home. But Vanessa says that only enhances the learning experience. "I feel like when people go abroad with a safety net, they don't venture out and try to meet new people or talk to other foreign students," she says. Other students considering study abroad fear missing a semester's worth of memories at their home campus. "You do miss out by studying abroad," she says. "It's a lie if people tell you that you don't. Life goes on without you."

But, she adds, "you come back with so many new experiences that you've moved on way further than a lot of people who stayed at normal college. You grow as a person."