Sam's Study/Intern Abroad Fund
Donation protected
Hello everyone,
My name is Sam. I'm a small town kid from Wisconsin attending Edgewood College aiming for a Bachelor's in Science of Psychology. I've always lived on this philosophy that you shouldn't pass up opportunities that you know you'll regret on your death bed. Looking back and having that hang over you, the "coulda, woulda, shoulda been"s, is one of the more horrible feelings I strive to minimize throughout my experience with life. Sometimes when great things present themselves at your doorstep, it only takes one look for you to tell yourself "I have to do this". Recently, I have been fortunate enough to have this revelation. As a student in my Junior year of college, I've spent the past several months (nearly a year, really), planning to do something amazing with my life. It took a lot of paperwork and tedious planning, but I decided to take a semester abroad the spring of my Junior year (aka Spring 2017). Over the course of the past year, I applied to be an exchange student, got my passport, was accepted into the University of Turku, Finland, went to New York to get my Residence Permit/Visa, and packed my bags. January 2nd, 2017 I hopped on a flight to Helsinki and am currently going through my semester as a student at the University of Turku and at Abo Akademi Unviersity. Here, I will fulfill the requirements for my Minor in Women's and Gender Studies.
As if being across the world in northern Europe wasn't cool enough, Edgewood offered an Internship Cohort program in Dublin, Ireland in the summer of 2017. This program would fulfill all kinds of major requirements that would really give prospective students an edge in ensuring they graduate with all of their requirements filled. This program is all about a personalized internship experience based on a student's major. In my case, I would participating in an internship specialized for my Clinical Counseling focus within my Psychology Major. Needless to say, I saw this opportunity and jumped on it. I've already completed all of the paperwork and am continuing to work with the ISA providers in order to ensure my documents are pristine and that I get the best placement possible for me.
To top everything off, recently NCHC announced this year's Parterns in the Parks excursions. As a student who has participated in one of these events before, I can say without a doubt that I was one of the most rewarding and incredible experiences of my entire life - one that I would love to do again. My last trip was to Harpers Ferry, Virginia to backpack on the Appalachian National Scenic Trail. This year, three excursions occur after my return to the States from Europe: Mount Rainer, Sequoia National Park, and Black Canyon National Park. It is my hope that after doing incredible things in Europe for a semester, which is undoubtedly my priority, I am able to attend another one of these excursions.
This all sounds great and amazing (and believe me it is, I'm eternally grateful), however it becomes a little more complicated when you begin to look at a budget. Essentially, my participation in all of these programs means that I will be gone from January 2nd, 2017 until July 20th, 2017. That's thereabouts of 7 full months overseas - living my life, learning, working, experiencing, finding my place in the world, and finding myself. Despite my monumental excitement, there is one barrier that remains standing in my way: FINANCES. The combined total cost of these programs is thereabouts of $34,000. That's a lot of money that I don't exactly have. I've been fortunate enough to procure an awesome amount of scholarships and financial aid, but that hasn't stopped me from applying to more. Right now, I have the means to be able to cover at least 90% of my Finland trip between out of pocket costs, small loans, and financial aid. Unfortunately, this means that there is $0 left in my personal budget to be able to afford the internship opportunity in Ireland or my potential attendance to another Partners in the Parks adventure. This is where y'all come in...
Growing up, my family had never been particularly wealthy but they had sacrificed much to ensure that my childhood was bright and enriched. Up until high school, I was entirely blind to the weight of our financial situation. I began working when I was 16 years old, but this was always money to spend rather than save. It was naïve of me to think that the money I had paycheck-to-paycheck was so disposable. Job after job, it was minimum wage, minimal hours, and not enough thought put into saving up for college. It wasn’t until senior year of high school that I realized the gravity of how money influences stability.
My mom admitted to me, in tears, that we had lost the house. We had lived on my mom’s disability checks for years after my father passed away, but eventually money runs out. It was a balancing act of what bill we could get away with being behind on until we just couldn’t pay the debts any longer. Even after we were told that the home, the one I had spent my entire life in up to that point, had been foreclosed on, I lived in blissful ignorance. I was going to college, and I would be living in a dorm. This meant that I still had a place to call “home”. I was entirely disconnected from the situation until my freshman year of college, when I said goodbye to the only home I had ever known. It took months of packing up memories and trashing things we could no longer afford to keep, but by sophomore year I had compiled a moving crew and helped my mom move to a house on the outskirts of my hometown. The place wasn’t pretty to look at, but at least she had somewhere to go.
This was what opened my eyes. In that moment, I was already tens of thousands of dollars in debt. I was coasting on work study and my savings from dead-end summer jobs. It was time to own up and be an adult. Paying your way through college using scholarships, loans, and covering the difference out of pocket would never prove to be a piece of cake. My savings began to dwindle, and I felt the pressure of upcoming apartment and study abroad costs. Currently, I am practicing the art of “getting by”.
My biggest financial goal is to find financial stability and security. This is important to me because I have spent the entirety of my life on shaky financial ground, whether I was immediately aware of it or not. Disposable income was a luxury. I don’t want to have to constantly be afraid of not having enough money to get by. I hate feeling like I need to work all the time just to make it through the month, only to start prepping myself for the next round of bills. At the beginning of my fall 2016 semester, I was working four jobs, which equated to over 60 hours of work a week while taking 17 credits in college. Even then, I felt the need to seek out more job opportunities and take more hours on the off chance I could make a few extra dollars. The anxiety I experience on a daily basis regarding my financial security is astounding and ultimately crippling. I don’t want to be afraid of losing everything. In order to get to this place in my life where this fear is less salient, I have been tirelessly working. What I need to do is focus on my studies, build my resume, experience the world, discover myself, and aim for a career that I will enjoy. Ideally, said career will also be able to provide me enough viable funds for me to do more than just “get by”.
My biggest financial goal in regards to my study abroad trip is not only to be able to afford the trips themselves in their entirety (and be able to safely do so while accommodating personal costs within my apartment still), but to be able to travel and experience the world. I want to be able to take advantage of as many opportunities as I am able to in order to ensure that my experience here is not only worthwhile and memorable but also enriching and incredible.
Throughout the course of my life, I have lacked the ability and opportunity to do much traveling. In fact, I have never left the United States (until now). This serves as a disadvantage for a Psychology Major with a Minor in Women and Gender Studies like me. The understanding I have of my studies is based on a narrow societal lens as provided by the cultures and subcultures found in the US. In this way, the information I receive and the lenses through which I view this information is biased to fit my own cultural sphere of existence. It is essential for a Clinical and Substance Abuse Psychologist to be culturally competent and sensitive as to help provide the best care possible to those who they serve. It is my wish to widen that lens and allow myself the opportunity to gain cultural competence through travel and study. Continuing my education outside of the US gives me the unique opportunity to gain new perspectives in my fields of study and apply this knowledge within my studies when I return home. In the same way, I would also like to offer my own perspectives regarding my understanding of Psychology and Gender Studies within the context of a new culture.
The most variant experience I have to different cultural spheres was centralized in my coursework. I learned about Multicultural Counseling in my Introduction to Psychotherapies course and regarded race and ethnicity as forms of identity in The Psychology of Men and Masculinities. But, these are limited views of complicated social ideals cross-culturally. My understanding of these things comes from the perspective of someone who was born and raised in the United States, and is therefore lacking in information and accurate representation. This, too, helped to spark my motivation in seeking out these alternative perspectives and actively engaging with them in an academic setting. I wish to become more knowledgeable about Psychology and Women and Gender Studies, and I believe this is difficult to do without alternative perspectives to consider and integrate into my current understanding. To accomplish this, I will need to travel and continue my education outside of the limited view of the United States.
Through Edgewood, I now have the opportunity to study and intern in Ireland after a semester in Finland. This eight week summer program fit optimally into my academic career plan, and allows for me to accommodate a second major because of the credits this opportunity will account for. Irish culture and history have always been particularly appealing to me. More so, the dichotomy of experiences I will have between Finland and Ireland is a unique chance for me to experience multiple cultures within a short period of time, as I will be traveling to Ireland immediately after my semester in Finland ends.
As previously stated, the thing standing in my way of participating in this internship is finances. Decreasing the monetary burden is my goal. Money is tight, and I'm doing everything I can to make it work. Regardless, my decision to try has not wavered, but this does not guarantee that I will be able to go without needing to account for the financial responsibility upon my return.
I believe wholeheartedly that this experience is entirely invaluable to my academic and professional careers. The extreme shifting of psycho-social-cultural factors moving from the United States to Finland followed by Ireland is an incredible opportunity for me to grow and learn in a multitude of cultures. The knowledge and perspectives I will gain from these places is unique to experiencing and learning within the environment. These are things that I will be able to carry with me wherever I go and continue to integrate them into my studies and future job opportunities. Specifically, working in Ireland will be a completely new challenge to overcome. I will be entirely out of my element and be required to quickly adapt to a novel situation and excel in my personalized placement. This alone is a useful skill to encounter because it will prepare me for career searching and allow me to be open to the idea of traveling for a job and starting fresh in a new place, which greatly expands the opportunities I will be able to take advantage of in the future. My placement will also impact what specific field I will move into post-graduation. Since I will be gaining experience in the field, I will be able to better determine where I best fit in and excel. Interning abroad grants me the prime occasion for personal, academic, and professional growth via the unique experiences that will arise as a result of my participation.
I never wanted it to come to something like this - but at the end of the day I would rather exhaust all of my options to fund my trip than board a plane knowing that my experience will be cut short because I just didn't try hard enough. It would mean the world to me to be able to safely afford to do this. Words cannot quite express the calling I feel. I had the revelation, the light came on in my head and I knew immediately that I needed to do this - I needed to study and intern abroad. But, this is where I need your help. Even a few dollars will help - and if you aren't able to donate, then just spreading the word around is more than enough. I am extremely grateful to have this opportunity in the first place, and would be exponentially so should I be granted the opportunity to go and be financially secure in doing so. I've set the goal for what I need to raise at $10,000. It looks like a lot (who am I kidding, it IS a lot), but I feel that this is a feasible goal - though I am not expecting to reach the entire amount. Whatever you can spare or are willing to give is all I really need. Your generosity and compassion are what's going to make this trip worth while, and I would appreciate it so, so much if you would be willing to help me out (like I said, even just a little - little things go long ways).
Thank you so much for being willing to hear my story, and thank you to those of you willing to donate and spread the word as a result.
Best wishes,
Sam
My name is Sam. I'm a small town kid from Wisconsin attending Edgewood College aiming for a Bachelor's in Science of Psychology. I've always lived on this philosophy that you shouldn't pass up opportunities that you know you'll regret on your death bed. Looking back and having that hang over you, the "coulda, woulda, shoulda been"s, is one of the more horrible feelings I strive to minimize throughout my experience with life. Sometimes when great things present themselves at your doorstep, it only takes one look for you to tell yourself "I have to do this". Recently, I have been fortunate enough to have this revelation. As a student in my Junior year of college, I've spent the past several months (nearly a year, really), planning to do something amazing with my life. It took a lot of paperwork and tedious planning, but I decided to take a semester abroad the spring of my Junior year (aka Spring 2017). Over the course of the past year, I applied to be an exchange student, got my passport, was accepted into the University of Turku, Finland, went to New York to get my Residence Permit/Visa, and packed my bags. January 2nd, 2017 I hopped on a flight to Helsinki and am currently going through my semester as a student at the University of Turku and at Abo Akademi Unviersity. Here, I will fulfill the requirements for my Minor in Women's and Gender Studies.
As if being across the world in northern Europe wasn't cool enough, Edgewood offered an Internship Cohort program in Dublin, Ireland in the summer of 2017. This program would fulfill all kinds of major requirements that would really give prospective students an edge in ensuring they graduate with all of their requirements filled. This program is all about a personalized internship experience based on a student's major. In my case, I would participating in an internship specialized for my Clinical Counseling focus within my Psychology Major. Needless to say, I saw this opportunity and jumped on it. I've already completed all of the paperwork and am continuing to work with the ISA providers in order to ensure my documents are pristine and that I get the best placement possible for me.
To top everything off, recently NCHC announced this year's Parterns in the Parks excursions. As a student who has participated in one of these events before, I can say without a doubt that I was one of the most rewarding and incredible experiences of my entire life - one that I would love to do again. My last trip was to Harpers Ferry, Virginia to backpack on the Appalachian National Scenic Trail. This year, three excursions occur after my return to the States from Europe: Mount Rainer, Sequoia National Park, and Black Canyon National Park. It is my hope that after doing incredible things in Europe for a semester, which is undoubtedly my priority, I am able to attend another one of these excursions.
This all sounds great and amazing (and believe me it is, I'm eternally grateful), however it becomes a little more complicated when you begin to look at a budget. Essentially, my participation in all of these programs means that I will be gone from January 2nd, 2017 until July 20th, 2017. That's thereabouts of 7 full months overseas - living my life, learning, working, experiencing, finding my place in the world, and finding myself. Despite my monumental excitement, there is one barrier that remains standing in my way: FINANCES. The combined total cost of these programs is thereabouts of $34,000. That's a lot of money that I don't exactly have. I've been fortunate enough to procure an awesome amount of scholarships and financial aid, but that hasn't stopped me from applying to more. Right now, I have the means to be able to cover at least 90% of my Finland trip between out of pocket costs, small loans, and financial aid. Unfortunately, this means that there is $0 left in my personal budget to be able to afford the internship opportunity in Ireland or my potential attendance to another Partners in the Parks adventure. This is where y'all come in...
Growing up, my family had never been particularly wealthy but they had sacrificed much to ensure that my childhood was bright and enriched. Up until high school, I was entirely blind to the weight of our financial situation. I began working when I was 16 years old, but this was always money to spend rather than save. It was naïve of me to think that the money I had paycheck-to-paycheck was so disposable. Job after job, it was minimum wage, minimal hours, and not enough thought put into saving up for college. It wasn’t until senior year of high school that I realized the gravity of how money influences stability.
My mom admitted to me, in tears, that we had lost the house. We had lived on my mom’s disability checks for years after my father passed away, but eventually money runs out. It was a balancing act of what bill we could get away with being behind on until we just couldn’t pay the debts any longer. Even after we were told that the home, the one I had spent my entire life in up to that point, had been foreclosed on, I lived in blissful ignorance. I was going to college, and I would be living in a dorm. This meant that I still had a place to call “home”. I was entirely disconnected from the situation until my freshman year of college, when I said goodbye to the only home I had ever known. It took months of packing up memories and trashing things we could no longer afford to keep, but by sophomore year I had compiled a moving crew and helped my mom move to a house on the outskirts of my hometown. The place wasn’t pretty to look at, but at least she had somewhere to go.
This was what opened my eyes. In that moment, I was already tens of thousands of dollars in debt. I was coasting on work study and my savings from dead-end summer jobs. It was time to own up and be an adult. Paying your way through college using scholarships, loans, and covering the difference out of pocket would never prove to be a piece of cake. My savings began to dwindle, and I felt the pressure of upcoming apartment and study abroad costs. Currently, I am practicing the art of “getting by”.
My biggest financial goal is to find financial stability and security. This is important to me because I have spent the entirety of my life on shaky financial ground, whether I was immediately aware of it or not. Disposable income was a luxury. I don’t want to have to constantly be afraid of not having enough money to get by. I hate feeling like I need to work all the time just to make it through the month, only to start prepping myself for the next round of bills. At the beginning of my fall 2016 semester, I was working four jobs, which equated to over 60 hours of work a week while taking 17 credits in college. Even then, I felt the need to seek out more job opportunities and take more hours on the off chance I could make a few extra dollars. The anxiety I experience on a daily basis regarding my financial security is astounding and ultimately crippling. I don’t want to be afraid of losing everything. In order to get to this place in my life where this fear is less salient, I have been tirelessly working. What I need to do is focus on my studies, build my resume, experience the world, discover myself, and aim for a career that I will enjoy. Ideally, said career will also be able to provide me enough viable funds for me to do more than just “get by”.
My biggest financial goal in regards to my study abroad trip is not only to be able to afford the trips themselves in their entirety (and be able to safely do so while accommodating personal costs within my apartment still), but to be able to travel and experience the world. I want to be able to take advantage of as many opportunities as I am able to in order to ensure that my experience here is not only worthwhile and memorable but also enriching and incredible.
Throughout the course of my life, I have lacked the ability and opportunity to do much traveling. In fact, I have never left the United States (until now). This serves as a disadvantage for a Psychology Major with a Minor in Women and Gender Studies like me. The understanding I have of my studies is based on a narrow societal lens as provided by the cultures and subcultures found in the US. In this way, the information I receive and the lenses through which I view this information is biased to fit my own cultural sphere of existence. It is essential for a Clinical and Substance Abuse Psychologist to be culturally competent and sensitive as to help provide the best care possible to those who they serve. It is my wish to widen that lens and allow myself the opportunity to gain cultural competence through travel and study. Continuing my education outside of the US gives me the unique opportunity to gain new perspectives in my fields of study and apply this knowledge within my studies when I return home. In the same way, I would also like to offer my own perspectives regarding my understanding of Psychology and Gender Studies within the context of a new culture.
The most variant experience I have to different cultural spheres was centralized in my coursework. I learned about Multicultural Counseling in my Introduction to Psychotherapies course and regarded race and ethnicity as forms of identity in The Psychology of Men and Masculinities. But, these are limited views of complicated social ideals cross-culturally. My understanding of these things comes from the perspective of someone who was born and raised in the United States, and is therefore lacking in information and accurate representation. This, too, helped to spark my motivation in seeking out these alternative perspectives and actively engaging with them in an academic setting. I wish to become more knowledgeable about Psychology and Women and Gender Studies, and I believe this is difficult to do without alternative perspectives to consider and integrate into my current understanding. To accomplish this, I will need to travel and continue my education outside of the limited view of the United States.
Through Edgewood, I now have the opportunity to study and intern in Ireland after a semester in Finland. This eight week summer program fit optimally into my academic career plan, and allows for me to accommodate a second major because of the credits this opportunity will account for. Irish culture and history have always been particularly appealing to me. More so, the dichotomy of experiences I will have between Finland and Ireland is a unique chance for me to experience multiple cultures within a short period of time, as I will be traveling to Ireland immediately after my semester in Finland ends.
As previously stated, the thing standing in my way of participating in this internship is finances. Decreasing the monetary burden is my goal. Money is tight, and I'm doing everything I can to make it work. Regardless, my decision to try has not wavered, but this does not guarantee that I will be able to go without needing to account for the financial responsibility upon my return.
I believe wholeheartedly that this experience is entirely invaluable to my academic and professional careers. The extreme shifting of psycho-social-cultural factors moving from the United States to Finland followed by Ireland is an incredible opportunity for me to grow and learn in a multitude of cultures. The knowledge and perspectives I will gain from these places is unique to experiencing and learning within the environment. These are things that I will be able to carry with me wherever I go and continue to integrate them into my studies and future job opportunities. Specifically, working in Ireland will be a completely new challenge to overcome. I will be entirely out of my element and be required to quickly adapt to a novel situation and excel in my personalized placement. This alone is a useful skill to encounter because it will prepare me for career searching and allow me to be open to the idea of traveling for a job and starting fresh in a new place, which greatly expands the opportunities I will be able to take advantage of in the future. My placement will also impact what specific field I will move into post-graduation. Since I will be gaining experience in the field, I will be able to better determine where I best fit in and excel. Interning abroad grants me the prime occasion for personal, academic, and professional growth via the unique experiences that will arise as a result of my participation.
I never wanted it to come to something like this - but at the end of the day I would rather exhaust all of my options to fund my trip than board a plane knowing that my experience will be cut short because I just didn't try hard enough. It would mean the world to me to be able to safely afford to do this. Words cannot quite express the calling I feel. I had the revelation, the light came on in my head and I knew immediately that I needed to do this - I needed to study and intern abroad. But, this is where I need your help. Even a few dollars will help - and if you aren't able to donate, then just spreading the word around is more than enough. I am extremely grateful to have this opportunity in the first place, and would be exponentially so should I be granted the opportunity to go and be financially secure in doing so. I've set the goal for what I need to raise at $10,000. It looks like a lot (who am I kidding, it IS a lot), but I feel that this is a feasible goal - though I am not expecting to reach the entire amount. Whatever you can spare or are willing to give is all I really need. Your generosity and compassion are what's going to make this trip worth while, and I would appreciate it so, so much if you would be willing to help me out (like I said, even just a little - little things go long ways).
Thank you so much for being willing to hear my story, and thank you to those of you willing to donate and spread the word as a result.
Best wishes,
Sam
Organizer
Sam Contreras
Organizer
Madison, WI
