Amanda Tragert, Reflections

When I moved from Boston to Athens, OH, with my family at 13, I didn’t expect such a small, rural town to be the place that jumpstarted my international experiences. Talk about culture shock – we were suddenly an hour from the nearest mall, and the local accent was almost impossible for me to understand at first. I didn’t realize until much later that this was training me for life as a global citizen. As I settled in over the next few years, I made friends with classmates from all over the world (thanks to visiting scholar parents), and started to explore all the cultural exchange opportunities that Ohio University offered to the community. My first travel abroad was a 1-week trip to Athens’ Japanese sister city of Komaki. I was electrified by the sheer amount of difference to explore, and the connections to make. I started taking Japanese classes at OHIO while in high school and participating in cross-cultural events with visiting Chubu exchange students (I’ll never forget the Chubu student that my friends and I took to prom! It must have been quite an experience for him). I returned to Ohio University as a full college student after a year of studying abroad in Germany. A full year with a host family fueled my drive to stay in an international, intercultural space. I declared a double major in German and Asian Studies (so that I could keep taking Japanese), and reconnected with friends from my high school Japanese classes. They told me all about their own experiences at Chubu University, and I made my plan to study at Chubu during my junior year. 

I spent a full year at Chubu University, surrounded by students who’d gone on exchange to Athens.  No matter how different the language and culture were, I was exploring a new country with Chubu students I’d already become friends with at home. I had the privilege of joining both sides of a long-running cultural exchange that introduced me to language classes, university, and life in another country. I had brought them on trips to Cedar Point and invited them to my dorm, and now they took my friends and I to Nagashima Spa Land and hot pot parties in their apartments. My Japanese became workable (I even read Japanese novels) and I gained an in-depth understanding of the logic of Japanese culture that allowed me to navigate life there more easily. This opened doors for me to explore professional options. I learned that teaching English was not for me, even though the kids were lovely, and that professional translation was fun but challenging, after helping the ESD club translate their materials for a conference presentation. This was also just a year after the disastrous 3.11 earthquake that had decimated large parts of northern Japan. Our group were the first OU students to travel to Iwate Prefecture for a community-led service project that has continued on until today. At the time, I remember comparing the relatively good conditions of the temporary housing for earthquake refugees to what I had seen for New Orleans post-Hurricane Katrina, and realizing just how much the US was failing our most vulnerable populations. When Covid-19 hit and quarantine began, I remembered the care and connection that the Iwate community kept up as examples of human resilience in the face of disaster.  

When I returned to Ohio after that year, I had changed noticeably. I had taken some of Japan’s collectivist values, like facilitating positive relationships and supporting community, to heart. I continued to support incoming Chubu students, and threw myself into volunteering with Association for Cultural Exchange (ACE) on campus, to be a good host for international community members and to introduce the values of intercultural relationships to OU students. Once I left OU, I started a Master’s degree in International Higher Education and Intercultural Relations because I valued that experience so highly. The Chubu-Ohio exchange was a key part of my growing up into a confident, open-minded professional. I have now worked in the field of education abroad for 3 years, first sending MIT students to international internships and now working at a state university’s study abroad office. One of my greatest joys is that I now get to help students attending a state university access that same life-changing experience I had. Every time a student who has never left the US starts planning a semester abroad, I see the huge barriers they are overcoming, and the potential they have to continue building mutual understanding in our country and our world.