Wildlands Studies: Quality Control Past Review
By Wild S (Environmental Ethics, Unnafiliated) - abroad from 06/22/2021 to 07/07/2021 with
Study Away Programs and Internships in the USA
It was worth being in the location, but the experience was not truly abroad and lacked critical elements of a positive journey in scholastic endeavors.
Personal Information
| How much international exposure did you have prior to this program? | None |
Review Your Program
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* Overall educational experience
Academic rigor, intensity, resources, etc. |
Physically demanding and draining, lacking in meaningful intellectual pursuit. |
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* Host Country Program Administration
On-site administration of your program |
Hosted in the USA |
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* Housing:
How satisfied were you with your living arrangements? |
Students had to sleep on rocky islands and inside government agency buildings due to storms and poor planning. |
| * Food: |
Options were limited, despite a ban on alcohol, alcohol was still purchased and ingested |
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* Social & Cultural Integration:
How integrated did you feel with the local culture? |
Most of time was spent outside of culturally impactful interaction |
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* Health Care:
How well were health issues addressed during the program? |
Students were bitten, found themselves floundering in kayaks that had flipped, and were pushed into wildly unsafe and painful situations. |
| * Safety: |
Students were often crying due to the hostility of the program's planning, physically unsafe. |
| If you could do it all over again would you choose the same program? |
No
This program was created for the professor's home state and his actions within the course, through poor planning and leadership, created a rift between a positive place of learning and a negative space that directly affected the students. |
Finances
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* Money: How easily were you able to live on a student's budget?
(1 = not very easy/$200+ on food & personal expenses/week, 2.5 = $100/week, 5 = very easily/minimal cost) |
Money was provided to faculty, they provided an experience that lacked options and didn't give the students space to exercise their choices. |
| Not including program expenses, about how much money did you spend on food and other expenses each week? | 0 |
| Do you have any general money-saving tips for future study abroad participants? | Do not participate with this program until they have rectified this type of study planning. |
Language
| * Did your program have a foreign language component? | No |
Other Program Information
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* Where did you live?
Select all that apply |
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* Who did you live with?
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* Who did you take classes with?
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| About how many local friends did you make that you will likely keep in touch with? |
A Look Back
| * What did you like most about the program? |
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| * What could be improved? |
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| * What do you know now that you wish you knew before going on this program? | How little planning went into creating a space that would allow for this experience to have positive ripple effects in all students lives. |
