Professor Stoner: Study Abroad vs. New Media

Professor Stoner's research, as she aptly explained, covers the field of studying abroad. However, after studying abroad herself, and furthering her research she decided that one of the factors heavily effecting the study abroad experience could categorize as its own research field with all it has to offer, and that would be new media. Just like it sounds, new media consists of advanced and prolonged use of things like the internet, cell phones, and social media (text messages and the social network).

 What the professor begins with is a graph of generally how studying abroad effects the average student. The part that she states has taken the heaviest hit from new media, is the culture shock, which arguably is the most important part of studying abroad. Not yet having studied abroad, but having spent time in many different countries, I can attest to this field of her research. I have visited about 10 different countries, each of which as I grew became easier and easier to acclimate to. Not because I "matured" as maybe I would have liked to think, but rather because the means in which I had to stay in touch with friends from home were constantly advancing. By the time I was 14 years old, roughly a freshman in high school, I was able to take my laptop on vacation, and simply link it to a wi-fi connection and skype or IM with all my friends from home for hours on end. It completely eliminated the "culture shock" I had faced merely years before, and it made visiting these other countries quite easy.

As much of a blessing the new media seemed to be at the time, it was also a much bigger curse. Although I had my friends "on demand" so to speak, this added to my feelings of missing out at home when I was not next to the computer communicating with all my best friends. I always found myself sitting in on a beautiful day rather than enjoying the beach or the night life, skyping or IM'ing, not realizing that I had a whole country in front of me to explore. Now, in recent years of travel, instant communication has only expanded, allowing us to not only access these this at the touch of a finger (literally, for those of us that are iPhone and Android users) but international data and cellular plans are now readily available, allowing us to not only skype, tweet, and IM out of the palm of our hands, but also make phone calls and text as well.

The future of studying abroad seems lost (in the sense of gaining a full understanding of the culture you've chosen to study) however, with these tools so readily available (the shift from laptops and wifi, to simply using a cell phone), we also catch ourselves reverting to our sides of curiosity, constantly downloading apps to find the nearest favorable restaurant, or night spot, or simply taking pictures with our instigram apps, to share them on twitter or with our friends from home. The future of studying abroad may have seemed lost but who knows, allowing us to find things more readily as smart phones allow us too, may evoke our interests in exploration once again.