Throughout my first two semesters of college, a certain trend made itself apparent to me. Whether it be girls I knew in high school or newly acquainted sorority sisters, everyone and their mom seemed to have a blog. Whether they were writing about what they’d learned in college, their religious endeavors, or anything under the sun, endless amounts of blog posts would pop up on my social media feeds. I adapted a motto of sorts: “Nobody wants to read your blog.” The blogging trend just didn’t sit well with me, as it felt self-centered and assumed the avid interest of all your Facebook friends.
However, here I am creating a blog. Although this is a requirement by my university, I must say I am excited to document my upcoming travels. I think this will be a good way to keep family and friends in the loop as I gallivant across Europe.
And thus, my bitter attitude towards blogs has circled back to bite me. Let this stand as my formal apology to anybody’s blog I might’ve rolled an eye at in the past. I will be blogging my travels and with every post I will send apologetic vibes into the universe. So with that, I begin.
Tomorrow I will depart from my home town of Dallas, TX, to Atlanta, GA. There, I will join most of my classmates from the study abroad program and depart on a nine hour flight to Ghent, Belgium. This will be my first time leaving the country and my first time flying alone.
In Ghent, we will be studying the sustainability of the European food system. I am incredibly excited about this topic and the location in which we will be studying. I am a chemical engineering major and think this program will not only be intriguing but also applicable to my future career. In fact, I have considered picking up a minor in sustainability on multiple occasions. I think this program will really help to solidify whether a career involving sustainability, food science, and/or biofuels is in my future. I am especially looking forward to learning about biofuels as I think that pertains most to chemical engineering and is most likely to be relevant to my future career.
I am so excited for all the things I will learn and all the experiences I will gain from being in a foreign country. I know spending time in Ghent will give me a much broader world view than I already have. I am most looking forward to the tours of food facilities we have planned. I have never had an inside view into the food industry, much less in a foreign country. I think seeing how the Belgians implement and maintain sustainability in their food system will allow me to come back to the USA and make comparisons and possibly implement change in the industry myself one day.
–Mary Kate
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Read more from Mary Kate at https://you.uark.edu/mkfairle/
Chemical Engineering major Mary Kate studied abroad with our U of A Faculty-Led: Sustainability in the Euro Food System program.
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