Although many students choose to pursue their graduate degrees at universities across the nation, there are some individuals who decide to look across the ocean.
Danita Mason is currently pursuing her Ph.D. in English at Ball State, but her master’s degree is from the University of Aberdeen in Scotland.
Q: Why did you decide to complete your master’s degree abroad?
A: After graduating from Ohio State University in 2006, I had an office job and I basically hated life. I
had always wanted to join the Peace Corps, so I did. I lived in the jungles of Paraguay for two-and-a-half years with no plumbing and no running water. After that, I had difficulty adjusting when I got back to the U.S. I felt like I needed to be abroad. I was struggling to fit in, and then I remembered how much I loved Scotland when I took a road trip there while studying abroad in England. So, I looked at schools in the U.K., applied to three, got into all of them, and chose to go to the University of Aberdeen.
Q: What was your experience abroad like?
A: It’s beautiful, but freezing. It’s about a mile from the northwest coast, and there is such a diverse population there because of the oil industry. I lived on campus in a dorm with four other people who were all from different countries: Korea, Zimbabwe, Bangladesh and Nigeria.
Q: What was the highlight of your experience?
A: Living with those girls, definitely. We’re best friends now. We had so many different foods and ethnic cuisines every night. You can’t find that much culture here in America, whereas these girls had connections from around the world. It really opened my mind to how other people see Americans. I was meeting and learning about various cultures — not just learning, but interacting with them. That made a huge difference.
Q: What was the biggest challenge you faced?
A: The other people in my program knew so much more than me, so I was playing catch-up a lot. They had a wider breadth of knowledge, a background I’d never been exposed to. At first, it was intimidating, but everyone was willing to help.
Q: Did you face any cultural challenges?
A: I was used to traveling, so mostly it was dealing with the culture of my roommates. For example, one of them held prayer revivals in her room.
Q: What was the professor-student relationship like?
A: It’s totally different. The first time I met my adviser, she was drinking a beer and offered me one! The professors went out to pubs with us, invited us to family events, went dancing with us — they seemed more like equals, more like friends, without playing favorites.
Q: What are your major take-aways from this experience?
A: Besides my academic take-away, I walked away with great friends, great cultural experiences and great professors for references.
Q: What are your plans for the future?
A: I plan to go back with my Ph.D. in literature and teach there. I want to move to Scotland after having kids and expose my kids to what I was exposed to. It was an incredibly fun and humbling experience.
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