Well, I'll tell you!
As some of you may know, I'm a Latin American Studies (LTAM) major. I became interested in this major pretty randomly. After going through a host of other majors and not really loving any of them I sat down in my dorm room one night, crying hysterically, and started flipping through the Undergraduate Bulletin (a gargantuan book listing all courses, majors and minors at UNC). As I was flipping I came across the Spanish major. I thought, since Spanish is the only topic I really liked and could see myself sticking with it made the most sense. It wasn't very practical for anything I was interested in doing though and that's when I discovered LTAM. Since you can concentrate in politics and I had been thinking of going to law school it seemed pretty perfect, combining two of my biggest interests.
After taking several classes in the major I know now that it was definitely the right decision and I'm immensely interested in everything related to it it, from human rights to politics to economics (and I HATE math). The thing that I love the most about LTAM is that I get to focus on politics with more of a humanitarian spin than is usually seen in the subject. Really, I've found that I just love learning about the human condition so that one day I can hopefully work to improve it.Whether I use law as my vehicle to that or if simply spend all my time building water systems in rural areas is still up for debate. Latin America is just a home base, so to speak, for that interest.
Anyway, in my major, study abroad is highly recommended and I really don't think I could ever reach the necessary level of proficiency in Spanish without it. As to why I chose Argentina.... Well, that's another random story.
Basically, Spain was out since I clearly had to go somewhere in Latin America. Mexico was out because my mother would have a heart attack and spend every night dreaming of drug cartels. Other locations only offered programs exclusively for foreigners and I wanted to be in university classes with real Spanish speakers for the full experience.
And then of course there was the cost aspect.
So, my choices in the end were pretty limited. I was about to just tell my mother to suck it up and choose Mexico but one day at work a co-worker told me he was planning on going to Argentina. He made it sound like fun and him and another co-worker assured me it'd be really easy to get lots of scholarship money to afford it since Argentina is a VERY costly program (they lied by the way. Mike, if you're reading this, you still owe me $15,000). This was about a week before the application was due and I was so stressed with indecision I just said "to hell with it, I'm going to Argentina."
This, admittedly, is not the best way to decide where to live for 5 months of my life. However, I think there is something to be said for the simplicity found in spontaneity. Since I made the decision I've spent countless hours researching Argentina and it's capital where I'll be living, Buenos Aires, and I can honestly say it sounds amazing. If I had taken more time to analyze my decision I probably would have talked myself out of going due to the cost or some other silly reason.
I truly think that Buenos Aires is the best place I could have chosen for myself and I am cautiously optimistic about this journey.
