Hello again! I’m back with another interview about off-campus study at DePauw. This time, I decided to talk to Maggie Westover ‘23 about her fall semester abroad in Glasgow, Scotland. I was super excited to learn about what she enjoyed and learned from her experience. If you are interested in studying abroad, feel free to reach out to the Hubbard Center after this read!
HC: Can you briefly introduce yourself?
MW: I’m Maggie Westover. I’m a junior from Evanston, Illinois. I’m a PoliSci major and history minor.
HC: Tell me a little about the study abroad program you chose.
MW: I went to the University of Glasgow through the Principia Consortium program, which is for honors students in the U.S. Certain colleges (mostly smaller liberal arts schools like DePauw) have a relationship with the University of Glasgow and go through this program. You take a Scottish Enlightenment course for the program.
HC: Why did you decide on that program?
MW: I wanted to go somewhere that spoke English, but I wanted to go abroad from a really young age. And I could get a HoScho credit through the University of Glasgow program. So that’s how I narrowed it down.
HC: What was your favorite part of the experience?
MW: I would say probably being able to travel. I was in a major city, so I was able to go anywhere in Europe pretty easily. It’s weird because in the U.S. if you take a two-hour flight, you end up three states over. If I took a two-hour flight [in Europe], I could get from Glasgow to Paris. It was really cool to do that!
Also, being able to go to school in a big city and go to a bigger school, since that’s not the experience I have at DePauw. I really appreciate DePauw’s class sizes more, but I think being able to live and adjust to a new city is really important.
HC: How do you reflect on your experience now that you’re back?
MW: It sounds so cliche, but just having a bigger worldview. I was able to talk to people from different parts of the world about what they think about current events. Since I’m interested in politics, it was really interesting to hear about a non-U.S. perspective. If I want to go abroad in the workforce, that’s an experience I already have. So, I kind of used being abroad as a trial run of figuring out what I want to do. I think it’s expanded my perspective and given me a lot of basic skills that will be transferable to my life from now on.