Right Choice? Right Choice. Right Choice!

My major is in Behavioral Sciences and my minor is in African and African American Studies. Declaring both of these areas came with many questions from people. When I declared my major in Behavioral Sciences, I was an incoming freshman who had to make a decision. I had heard that it was best to go into college with a major even if you had to change it later. So I sat in my mom’s office at work going over the packet of information we had gotten at the freshman orientation. I had the University of Michigan Dearborn class catalog in one hand and major description packets in the other. I was trying to see what “fit” me.

After talking with my mom, she helped me realize that I loved helping people. My name means “helper and defender of mankind”, and that is exactly what I have always done and love to do. I immediately looked at the social sciences and after reading the descriptions, saw that Behavioral Sciences was for me! People asked what I was going to do with the degree and if I thought I would make any real money. I cannot say that over the past 4 years I have not asked myself those same questions. BUT, every single time I find that I am content in knowing that this is what God has called me to do and this is the field that He has placed me in, and….I LOVE IT!!

The College of Arts, Sciences, and Letters is amazing. No matter what your discipline, you can feel the care, concern, love, and empathy of the staff within this college! Whether I was in a class for my major/ minor such as Marriage and Family problems or Black Family in Contemporary America or I was in an elective class such as Spanish I or Women’s Film Studies, I could feel that the professors cared for me and truly wanted to see me succeed in whatever area I was going into.

Declaring my minor in African and African American studies came with a few questions as well. As I always tell people, choosing this minor had nothing to do with me being African American. But it was chosen because I want to help people. People of all colors and creeds. People who need advocates or just someone who they know cares for them. I found it amazing to be able to study a people who have been through so many greatly documented struggles, triumphs, and ongoing battles. Being able to study the poems, novellas, essays, legal documents, and other historical artifacts of great African American citizens (even before they were recognized as such) has allowed me to not only look at African Americans in a new light, but all people in a new light.

No matter the differences, we are all human. Being able to study the struggles, victories, and perseverance of this group will allow me to connect and have greater empathy for any group of people I come into contact with throughout my counseling and therapy career. This is why I studied African and African American studies as well as Behavioral Sciences. I will continue to help people.

The staff, students and faculty at UM Dearborn CASL are the ABSOLUTE best!! The atmosphere is exciting and inviting. Everyone encourages you to do your best and push yourself. Take risks to talk to professors and ask questions-go above and beyond! Professors are understanding of our busy, busy lives, yet also don’t let us use our busyness as excuses, but they work with us to push ourselves to greater heights.

I am extremely grateful to be graduating from CASL within U of M-Dearborn. I am completely grateful and give all credit to God almighty for real. It is only with him that I have been able to do this and continue to grow and mature even more. This is such a complete honor. I always aim to work hard and give God my absolute best in any and everything I am involved in. I try to help and contribute to anyone that I can and gain wisdom from every faculty person that is willing to give it.

I am so happy to be at the University of Michigan-Dearborn and in the Behavioral Sciences Department. I am so completely honored by the Behavioral Science Honor Scholar award. I know that so many of my classmates are phenomenal.

I thank all of the Behavioral Sciences faculty that have poured into me and my education and continue to support me; faculty I have met and ones I have not yet met. This is a GREAT School!

I once lived in a Castle but now I am climbing up the Eiffel Tower

Once Upon A Time, there was a young man who lived in a castle and studied French and Linguistics. His passion for French and Linguistics took him across the world to climb up the Eiffel Tower but who knew it would happen so soon? After having lived in France for more than a month, as not only as an exchange student but also as a French major with a minor in Linguistics, I cannot express how it feels to get to the top of the Eiffel Tower. It was not too long ago that I was staring upwards as the Eiffel Tower lit up the surrounding area.

However, before this all happened it was definitely a struggled but I owe it all to my professors: Gabriella Eschrich, Lindsay Colby, Stéphan Spoiden, Jamie Lee, and Daniel Davis. All of these amazing professors have showed me in various ways what it means and what it takes to think outside the box. I was challenged academically but they all saw more potential in me and encouraged me to take this journey abroad.

I must admit being a French major in CASL is somewhat rare and that is a good thing. It definitely takes a special person to continue with a foreign language because ultimately it is another way of thinking about the world and perceiving the world. I guess those who study foreign languages have something in common with all the soldiers who fought throughout the night so we could be here today. We are dedicated, open minded, able to adapt to various environments and can find a way to survive.

After studying French for 4 years, I thought I would have all the tools needed but I was wrong. Learning a foreign language is a lifetime task. For example, My first week in France I had to open up a bank account and do various other normal things such as: getting health insurance, getting directions to the bus or train station, ordering food, buying supplies such as a fitted bed sheet, Band-Aids etc. I did not have the knowledge of how to express those things. Immediately I wanted to turn around and go back home because I was outside my comfort zone.

The days dreadfully went by going into my second week. I went to the welcome week events where I met more ERAMUS students from all over Europe, South Korea, Africa, South America, Greenland, and the UK. Linguistically and Culturally, I was enchanted and consumed by how different we all were but we had one goal in mind that lead us here. Yet, I felt disgusted. I was disgusted by everything and how I missed some of the most annoying things in America. I missed the annoying sound of the microwave going off, driving in traffic, all of the detours because of construction on the roads in Michigan, my friends, and my family. I missed it all. Most importantly, I felt challenged and alone.

However, I soon realized that I was changing the entire time by being here. I had to accept the fact that everybody does not get this opportunity. Yes… it sucked at times dealing with a new culture and depending on the train or bus. One night though it was raining and some of the ERAMUS students and I went to see la basilique du sacré-cœur and there was a warm wave of content that engulfed me. My perspective on France changed slowly just as you awaken from a long dream. Looking back, I was able to see Monuments that people dream of seeing their entire life and that is a privilege. I want to thank Maureen Linker who taught me that we often fail to see when we are privileged but can see when we are oppressed. After noticing that I felt like it was my duty to take this experience and show it to those who may not get this chance. I wanted to use my privilege by being here and share it with others. I have been recording all of my adventures traveling around Paris for the past month. Through the dimly lit alleys on those rainy nights to walking past the Eiffel tower on the sunny days. My friends and family have seen all that I can see. I owe them that much. Indeed, my intention is not to brag about how I am here but to inform the readers that if your dreams do not scare you then they are not big enough and you never know where your dreams will take you and who you can meet. I have not grown in ways that I hoped I would by coming here, maybe I just have not noticed yet, but I have grown in many other ways.

Tyree Martin is a French major with a Linguistics minor studying abroad at the University of Versailles. He'll be posting regularly about his semester in Europe.

"Uncomfortable is Good"

Strange is the world (according to Czesław Niemen), and stranger than all is Poland. It’s a phoenix country led by a phoenix capital, rebuilt by the mythic Robinsons on ashes and ruins. A land of magic, where fire-breathing dragons still guard castles as in Krakow. A country marked by layers of sadness and horror of wars and occupation and partition, yet experiencing breathtakingly rapid change and growth. A place now experiencing brain-drain and exodus of the younger generation but also home to the optimistic hipsters and do-it-yourself, build-it-yourself, make-it-yourself go-getters bringing fresh life to urban decay. It’s a place you can’t just read about and you can’t visit without being changed.

Stepping out of the Krakow airport with my motley group of acquaintance-students, riding a terrifyingly fast taxi through a strange city in East-Central Europe, I seriously doubted why I decided to come half way across the world to a country I knew virtually nothing about. Over the next four weeks, we wandered through tons of museums, read through a stack of journal articles, met with researchers, went on guided tours, and learned about the past century of Polish history.

“Uncomfortable is good,” Professor Anna Muller said repeatedly. “That’s when you learn. That’s where you can be creative.” These words were often a source of encouragement for me because living normal life without speaking Polish was often tricky and sometimes awkward and a little scary. There was one evening when I was feeling proud of myself successfully ordering something vegetarian at a milk bar with the help of a nice lady behind me... and my food ended up being a sugar covered rice, jelly and sour milk concoction of stomachache doom. But there was also this fantastically pink soup (Chlodnik) we called Pepto-Bismol soup and the wonderful invention of fresh strawberry pierogi.

There were also [lots of] moments when I never wanted to come home and I would get lost in blissful thought, scheming ways to stay in Poland or at least move there after I finished my degree. (I’m still dreaming one day of spending a year or two in Lublin learning Polish.)

There can’t be anything to beat sipping coffee in the Zielony Balonik while reading about the historical cabaret and then wandering the rooms to see the actual cartons made by and portraying the people discussed in our text. Unless, of course, it would be random evening coffee with polish artists who encouraged my artwork and whose exhibits I could often see in museums the next day. Or unless it would be wandering through the eerily empty Gdansk shipyard where Solidarność was born after meeting with Lech Wałęsa and hearing his thoughts on the young people’s role in modern solidarity. Or finding the graffiti that bored Polish nobles carved into the walls of the Holy Trinity Chapel in the Lublin castle in the 1600s. (We were almost the only ones there in the history-laden chapel, once a prison and now stripped of any religious vestiges except the chipping frescos.) ...Ok, so I guess there were a lot of “unbeatable” moments.

Poland also has—without question—the coolest museums I’ve ever experienced. Be it the Krakow city museum catacombing under the market square to show the city’s foundations, to the artifact-filled Solidarność museum, situated in the historic shipyard, to the uncertainly undulating spaces of Polin, to the chaotic, terrifying sensory explosion of the Uprising Museum in Warsaw, to the yet unbuilt WW2 museum in Gdansk whose artifact catalogue we were beyond lucky to be allowed to explore... there is nothing to compare to these museums.

Oh, and did I mention that Poland is just plain beautiful? Because it is. Castles, Tatras,

Krakow, the Baltic, Warsaw... there is so much to see and be in awe at.

Sure, I could have read about Polish history at home, could have watched the Katyń movie on my own, could have researched the holocaust at a local museum. But meeting with the people still pursuing justice for holocaust victims at the Institute for National Remembrance, hearing Bór-Komorowski’s son tell stories of his father in the room in the Jagiellonian University where the professors were assembled before being taken by the Nazis, even just drinking polish beer with Polish university students from Gdynia—these real experiences are where the deeper learning took place that could never have been reached simply through the comfort of my laptop at home. Sure, at times it was uncomfortable or strange—travel always is—but Poland is an awesome place and I hope one day I’ll be able to return.

-Taylorann Lenze

The University of Michigan-Dearborn’s “Memory and Oblivion: Polish and Polish-Jewish history in the Polish Modern Landscape,” led by faculty members Dr. Anna Muller and Dr. Jamie Wraight, was a 4-week history study abroad through Krakow, Zakopane, Lublin, Lodz, Warsaw, and Gdansk.