For Anna Bigelow, traveling to Barcelona has been a long-time dream.
Bigelow and her younger brother, both fluent Spanish speakers, had once planned a mock trip to the Spanish city for a project in grade school. Their dream was finally realized while Anna was on a travel break from studying at Emerson’s Kasteel Well campus in the Netherlands this semester.
“We’ve talked about other times it could’ve happened,” Bigelow, a sophomore theater education major, said, “but coming to the castle meant that one of us was in Europe, so it gave him the opportunity to come here and do it.”
As the program’s 86 students prepare to return to the United States next week, many students shared similar stories of dreams realized and perspectives shifted—a spectrum of one-in-a-lifetime experiences, for better or worse.
“Your life [will continue as before] when you’re back in the States,” Tallulah Schorvitz, a sophomore visual media arts major, said. “But [a semester abroad is] life-changing in the sense that you learn so much about yourself and others.”
Schorvitz said the semester taught her a lot about resilience and self-reliance and gave her an alternative perspective on what to expect from being abroad. She dealt with multiple serious events—a death in the family early in the semester, losing multiple credit cards and IDs during a trip to Rome, and getting food poisoning during solo travel in Portugal, to name a few.
“You’re going to have down moments, you’re going to get sick … You’re not on vacation, you’re living life while studying,” Schorvitz said. “If I figured that out earlier, I feel like I would have been able to have a lot more grace in myself.”
For many, the study aspect of studying abroad came with unexpected challenges and navigating a more exam-focused culture compared to Boston.
Joshua Truesdale, a junior creative writing major who transferred from Fitchburg State University, said he was prepared for the shift from Emerson’s usual academics, noting that Kasteel Well’s classes reminded him of his previous school.
“I was originally at a college that had exam weeks, so I’m used to that, but it was definitely different from what an Emerson student [might experience],” said Truesdale. “A lot of people aren’t prepared. We don’t really have that kind of exam structure back on the Boston campus.”
Eliot Arnold, a sophomore marketing major, enjoyed the class offerings and teaching style at Kasteel.
“I don’t think I cared about a class this much being at Emerson until now,” Arnold said of his Climate Change and Intro to Ethics courses, despite what he described as an intense workload requiring serious time management.
Some students who are used to urban scenes like New York City, Los Angeles, and Boston told The Beacon how challenging it was to adjust to the approximately 1,400-person village of Well.
“I just feel very trapped here, and there’s not a lot of freedom to do things,” said Ethan Sutton, a media arts production major, who expressed a disinterest in the Kasteel-offered excursions to local cities and attempts to introduce students to Dutch culture, saying it took away from other travel opportunities.
Sutton also explained that an additional challenge was the dining options at Kasteel. As someone who is lactose intolerant, he didn’t feel accommodated by the food offerings, where meals are served buffet-style with only one or two entrée choices. Sutton said that he, along with another student who is vegan, often had to try and find alternative food options, which proved difficult in the remote setting of Kasteel Well.
Sutton said various students met with Dojna Krecu, the director of housing and residential life at Kasteel, about their concerns, but to no avail.
“It’s been addressed, and they haven’t done anything about it,” Sutton said.“They’re respecting the European traditions here, but I think they should respect the kind of diets where we’re more inclined to [eat].”
Other students didn’t mind the isolated campus setting, finding it both freeing and soothing. Arnold said his time at Kasteel was a peaceful, pastoral antidote to constant travel and recommended that all incoming students take at least one weekend to stay and explore Well.
“This area [where you’re already living] is very beautiful and worth enjoying,” Arnold said. “And it deserves just as much praise as anywhere else.”
Now, as the students prepare for the eight-hour flight home, many describe mixed emotions.
“I’m ready. I miss my people. I also really miss American food,” Schorvitz said, though adding that Well will hold a special place in her heart.
Her time abroad has also recontextualized the country she calls home.
“I have a newfound appreciation of the concept of what the United States wants to be … [and it] definitely feels like home,” she said. “Studying abroad made me want to fight … [and] do something to make it better back home instead of going somewhere else where they have their [own] problems.”
For many of Kasteel’s students who left the United States before President Donald Trump took office, returning to the country will also mean contending with the political state of America and going through “enhanced vetting” at customs and border control under the new administration.
During a pre-departure meeting with the Office of Student Affairs and Kasteel staff earlier this month, many students expressed concern about what the re-entry process could look like, even for U.S. citizens, amid reports of increased searches of phones and personal social media pages at the border.
The enhanced security comes weeks after a Tufts University doctoral student, Rumeysa Öztürk, a Turkish national, was detained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials outside of her Somerville home. Öztürk, who is being held in a Louisiana detention facility, was living in the U.S. on a valid F-1 student visa before it was revoked by the federal government without notice, roughly a year after co-authoring an op-ed in The Tufts Daily in support of the pro-Palestine movement on campus.
Xia Poddar, a sophomore business of creative enterprises major from India, said Öztürk’s story has worried her and some of her friends, as she prepares to return to the U.S from her home country over the summer to work and attend Emerson next fall.
“A lot of my friends are scared because they post political things [and] they’re scared of that [happening to them],” Poddar said, adding that she avoids political posting on social media for that reason. “I’m very scared, [and] I’m being very precautious … because my parents have paid a lot of money for me to go to the U.S to study … it’s a big investment on their part, so I cannot mess it up at all.”
On Monday, it was announced that at least one international Emerson student had their visa revoked by the Department of Homeland Security, a growing trend under the Trump administration. The student, who was not identified, was not believed to be targeted for protest-related activity, President Jay Bernhardt said in an email. Emerson is among dozens of higher education institutions around the country under federal investigation for allegedly failing to protect its Jewish populations following the uptick of pro-Palestine action on campus.
However, for Arnold, the prospect of returning home is tinged with optimism too, with the trip demystifying an ideal view of Europe he used to have.
“All governments are pretty rough right now; it could always be worse, but the grass is always greener,” Arnold said, explaining that consuming news from the U.S. while abroad felt like hearing things about a country that has nothing to do with you.
“You feel bad, but you don’t experience it. But now I’m going to go back and get to experience it,” Arnold said. “Politically, I am ready to do what I need to do.”
