My name is Mitch and I am in my third year of a double degree of Development Studies and Social Science.
Last year I was fortunate enough to be involved in a uni trip where 20 students from uon from a range of different disciplines visited the Indonesian island of Kalimantan. I had never been to Indonesia before, but the trip was one that provided an air of clarity around where I would like to take my studies. I fell in love the country, the people, the culture and decided that in my future studies I would like to focus on studying Indonesia’s path of development. I continued to learn Indonesian and even enrolled in a Diploma of Languages so I could study the Universities Indonesian language courses taught by Richard Ledger. If you are looking to try something fun and new and maybe have a few electives spare, I cannot recommend the classes enough.
So, when an email from Prof. Ifte Ahmed came through to me advertising an upcoming Summer School in the Indonesian city of Surabaya that would focus on regional development in SEA I immediately enquired about it and applied to be a participant. After some time, I heard back and was accepted to attend the event in person. So started the process of organising everything and with some help from my program advisor and global experiences I was able to have the summer course approved as a credit towards my degree through HUMA2001.
I managed to squeeze in some time before the conference started to go and visit the friends I had made last year in Banjarmarsin. It was absolutely incredible being able to return to the city 12 months later and reconnect with so many of them, hear what they had been up to and how much had changed since we spent those two weeks together. Some were graduating and some had since also travelled abroad. A few had even been running English classes in one of the poorer areas in the city and were kind enough to invite me along for a class where I got to interact with the young students starting to learn their first English sentences. These people-to-people connections are just so special, and I am so grateful that I have met these incredible people that will be lifelong friends due to me taking a chance to travel overseas with the University. But my stay in Banjarmarsin was short, as the conference was about to start in Surabaya, so I caught my flight to the city excited for what I was about to learn.
On the first day of the Summer School conference, I was amazed to learn how diverse the backgrounds of the participants were. Ugandans, Pakistanis, Namibians, Zimbabweans, Malaysians, Kazakhstanis, and of course Indonesians amongst many other nationalities made up the other participants. I was the lone Australian, although the lone Filipino representative was also from the University of Newcastle! Diversity was to become a much explored topic over the Summer School both insight and outside of the classroom and we all mingled and shared our stories and experiences. I found out that many of these students were completing their masters studies in Indonesia on International Student scholarships.
Over the course of the next eight days, we were all treated to a wonderful variety of lecturers and field trips. Some of my personal favourites were Prof Philippe De Lombaerde from the United Nations University and Professor Nari Shelekpayev from Yale University but all of the speakers were wonderful and explored a wide range of topics concerning the challenges, processes and concepts around regional development. It was also amazing insight to hear the questions posed from my fellow participants concerning their own regions of Central Asia, Africa and the Middle East. This is the sort of valuable insight I may never have been afforded without embarking on this trip and its information that I think will be immeasurable important as I pursue my career goals.
As the conference wound up the new friends I had made and I all shared our contact details and wished each other luck and future success in our endeavours. I have no doubts that some of these wonderful people will go on to do amazing things in their lives and I am so grateful that I had the ability to share this experience with them. I was even lucky enough to visit famous Mt. Bromo volcano in Malang after the conference with the family of an Indonesian student who I met while they were studying at UoN.
For any UoN student wondering whether or not they would like to travel overseas with their study I would say do it, go for it. Travel is one of the best investments you can make in yourself and if you are able to combine it with your studies then it is even better!! There are so many different oppurtunities available for a wide range of different degrees so look into it today and change your life!
Global Traveller 