"The Career Benefits of Studying Abroad in the MENA" by Elena Corbett
The first point I would make is that, historically and for all sorts of reasons that we're always trying to point out and problematize (check out our web presence, materials, or any larger thing in which we participate in either the professional EdAbroad or Middle East Studies space), most of our program participants are people considering careers in government or international politics or development.
For such participants, whatever their larger professional and personal goals may be, they tend to be focused on studying language intensively, engaging in community-based learning, and being able to say that they've had an academic area studies experience in a MENA region context.
There's a dark side to that—higher ed in the US is a market and study abroad is part of that market and it mostly prefers that we offer participants all those things according to very colonial paradigms and tends to punish us when we don't. Especially when participants go to a program in a less "traditional" destination – i.e., all of the Global South, and the MENA region in particular—there's a certain "expertise" assumed of them as a result.
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When including study abroad on your resume or CV, list it under your home institution in the education section. This indicates that it was part of your degree program rather than a seperate institution.
The bright side, especially if government or international politics or development is your jam, is that, for better or worse, you can totally run with that. You don't have to get too creative about the career benefits of your time abroad. You come away with tangible evidence of gains in language proficiency, academic credit toward your degree, and, if you've engaged in community-based learning, a real experience working for a local organization in a facilitated, decolonial framework that you can present any way you want. Hopefully, it all means more to you as a participant, but at the risk of sounding cynical, it can be like the "I founded my own non-profit" line on the resume. (If you were really good, however, you might found your own non-profit abroad. I'm totally kidding...but also not. Sadly, that will really impress a bunch of people even if it's a lot of nothing.)
What should you do if it's not so obvious? Regardless of your intended career path, studying abroad provides an opportunity to strengthen the interpersonal and soft skills that will benefit you in the workplace.
It’s so critical that everyone take advantage of every opportunity afforded by just being abroad – the incredible number and variety of things that your program offers, but also by being proactive and creating even more opportunities for yourself. You've got this chance – you have to fully take it.
If you do it right, your study abroad experience is an intensive course in complex problem-solving and everything that comes along with it – from the very mundane activities necessary to live day-to-day, to the trickiest and most intimate spaces of human interaction. Ideally, it should make you a better person. Not better than others, but a better self. And a better self doesn't virtue signal.
Yes, those are very general and big ideas. But you can start there and then get very specific. You have to get very specific, because "I studied abroad in Tunis for a summer" is merely interesting small talk to many people and just weird to many others. "That's nice. So what?" (That said, it's never merely interesting small talk to me and I'll be happy to talk about that with you all day. But I'm a study abroad professional with responsibility for programs in Tunisia, so...)
Some valuable questions to consider about the personal benefits of your experience abroad include:
Communication
When you realized that your host mom really meant this when she said that, what did you figure out about the importance of indirect communication and cultural norms regarding communication?
What specifically did you adjust about your own communication and your own behavior to decrease the likelihood of miscommunication and have more successful interpersonal interactions?
What did that practically look like?
How did you apply this beyond your homestay?
How have you applied this since your time abroad ended?
What does this have to do with your approach to your career and to any job and, critically, the communities that are inseparable from those?
Multicultural awareness
When you encountered a very different classroom culture in your host country, what did you learn about learning?
What norms that you came with or expectations that you had did you have to adjust to be a successful learner?
What did you appreciate about those differences in classroom culture and what they meant for your learning?
How do you understand your work environment in light of that?
How does it help you think about what you will encounter in the various progressions of your career and the various communities that will always be a part of that?
Adaptability
Did you learn that a better self is always a work in progress?
As such, what do you practically bring to a work environment, and what do you want to take away from it?
Dr. Elena Corbett is the Director of Amideast Education Abroad.
