Ava Langanki

During my fall break while studying abroad in Italy, I used my Honors grant to travel independently to Madrid and Granada, Spain. In Madrid I visited museums and cultural sites and explored the city, and in Granada I spent time at the Alhambra and experiencing the food and history of southern Spain – which felt like a completely different world! I also attended the Radiohead concert back in Madrid, which was an incredible way to experience one of my favorite bands on their first concert back in nearly a decade. I also loved experiencing crowd culture and live music norms in a different country.

I was surprised by how different Madrid and Granada felt from each other, even within the same country. I had been to the south of Spain before flying into Madrid, so the pace of life in Granada made more sense to me while Madrid’s large city feel was overwhelming at first. So by judging Madrid as very similar to the places I had visited, I hadn’t realized how different the energies were. I was also surprised by my own demeanor on the trip, more specifically the confidence I had begun to build up by the middle of the semester through living in Italy and different travel. Things that would have stressed me out, such as the language barrier or different public transit systems, felt manageable by this point.

This trip reinforced something I had been learning all semester – that being comfortable with ambiguity is a huge life skill. Traveling independently in a country where I hardly spoke the language gave me an edge for quick problem solving and also gave me the broader cultural perspective I had come abroad for. Understanding how people live, move through spaces, and engage with culture differently across not just countries but regions is extremely important to personal growth in my opinion. For academic growth, I could apply this all to my data analytics studies as these small pieces of data about human behavior are what make analysis meaningful. As data isn’t just about numbers but the people behind it. The more contexts I learn about, the better I’ll be at understanding the ‘why’ behind the numbers.

This trip was part of a broader semester abroad that has thoroughly changed me. This has shaped how I think about working across cultures and adapting to unfamiliar environments. I plan to continue building on what I’ve learned through my coursework in data analytics, particularly in courses that deal with how technology and data impact different communities. I have also begun to research what an internship abroad would look like, or even ones in the US that involve cross-functional work and data-driven decision making that I can draw my study abroad experiences from. I can also reflect on my semester abroad as I interview for internships, due to adaptability and independent problem-solving.

The Honors grant made this trip possible, without it I wouldn’t have been able to fund an entire week in Spain. Having the funding meant I could plan the trip on my own terms and prioritize experiences and not be so limited. It gave me the freedom to take a risk on something unstructured, and the trip ended up being one of the most valuable parts of my semester.