The people you meet while studying abroad at John Cabot University are an international community of friends with different experiences, perspectives, and skills. A student body from all over the world is a large part of what makes a study abroad environment so enriching.
Having a diverse group of people around you can help you become a more thoughtful person, even enhancing your cognitive abilities and making you smarter. This can come in handy in class, while exploring Italy, and in conversations with your new friends.
Learn how you can leave your study abroad experience with more wit and intelligence than you came in with.
You can Challenge Cognitive Biases When You Study Abroad in Italy
Availability heuristics are mental shortcuts that use examples our brains can easily recall to make decisions or evaluate topics. This can translate into how we interact with people we meet and what our first impressions of them are. For example, we may evaluate a person who reminds us of our best friend as being kind, funny, and easy to talk to.
When interacting with others, this can also lead to stereotyping and prejudice. You will meet people from your program when you study abroad in Italy who don’t have the same cognitive biases as you. This experience will challenge you to open up your mind. Surrounding yourself with different people from all walks of life will challenge any biases you might have when first meeting them, and you can do the same for others. When you are less confined in your mental examples and reference points, you become a more open, intelligent thinker.
Your Friends from John Cabot can Enhance your Creativity
Being introduced to new perspectives is a huge part of travel in general, and certainly a big part of meeting other students who are broadening their scope of knowledge alongside you. Your friends will have different childhood experiences, cultural references, and world views from you. Listening and putting yourself in others’ shoes gives you an invaluable opportunity to look at issues and topics from brand-new angles that you didn’t have access to before.
When communicating with people who come from different backgrounds or lead very different lives from yours, you are challenged to find common ground and sometimes new ways to express ideas. If your friend from school didn’t grow up with the same TV shows and music as you, maybe you will discuss your culturally different adolescences in an interesting, refreshing way. This makes you capable of finding different routes to accomplishing goals in communication, and makes you a more creative person. You can apply your broadened thinking to problems and situations in your future.
Diverse Groups Process Information Better
It’s believed that a team of a diverse group of people will process information more carefully than a homogeneous group. In a group that has a variety of people, there is a wider net of knowledge and experience to draw from. When working or speaking with people at John Cabot who are different from you, it’s harder to have blind confidence in your own opinions. You’re more likely to be open to ideas that conflict with what you think you know.
This expansion of your mind will make you a brighter student and person, as you’ll consider new angles, and even when you have an answer, you might reconsider it through different eyes.
Are you interested in studying abroad at John Cabot?
Contact John Cabot University for more information.
