A Certain Point of View: Writing, Film and Stuff

When I was 25 years old and still working toward an AA degree in Journalism/Mass Communications at what's now Miami-Dade College, I was accepted into the College Consortium for International Studies' Semester in Spain program. For 12 weeks in the Fall Term of the 1988-89 academic year, I lived and studied in Seville, Spain's third largest city, along with 41 other students from around the U.S. Not knowing what, exactly, I was getting myself into, I also volunteered to send dispatches from Seville to Catalyst , my home campus' student newspaper as its first foreign correspondent. Having had several years' worth of experience as a reporter and section editor, I thought that it would be a somewhat tricky but still manageable assignment, but in the days before the Internet and e-mail were available to the average person, it ended up being harder and more frustrating than I'd bargained for. Nevertheless, I did manage to, as we reporter types like to say, get

When I was a 25-year-old college sophomore and majoring in Journalism/Mass Communications, I had the once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to take part in an overseas-study program co-sponsored by Miami-Dade Community College’s Foreign Language Department and the College Consortium for International Studies. At the time, I had just about taken most of the required courses for my Associate in Arts degree except math (my bete noir) and three credits’ worth of the foreign language pre-requisite. I had also, or so I thought, done everything I had set out to do as a reporter/editor at the campus student newspaper, so I was feeling a bit unmoored and restless without a plan for what I figured would be my final year on the staff. Looking back on it now, I’m not sure what, exactly, prompted me to sign up for the Semester in Spain program. Part of it, I’m sure, was a sense that this would be my best chance to go to Europe for a significant amount of time. Maybe it was my journalist’s instinctive

Study abroad is more than educational: it’s an experience Alex Diaz-Granados Columnist (Originally published in the December 1, 1988 issue of Catalyst ) SEVILLE, Spain (CCIS Program) Over the past six weeks of my stay here in Seville as a participant in the College Consortium for International Studies’ Semester in Spain program, I have come to understand how challenging studying abroad really is. Several other students from this campus are also taking part in this program. In many respects, studying abroad is no different from studying at our home college or university. We have our schedule set up much like we do in the U.S. with lectures and reading assignments. We have midterms and finals, of course, although in some classes final exams are given at the director’s discretion. Unlike studying in the U.S., we’re learning about a different country’s history, culture, government and economic system, not by reading about these in a textbook, but by living in it. “It’s be