Hello!
Thanks for visiting my blog! I hope this medium will be a way for me to relay my experiences as I live and research in Geneva, Switzerland for the next four months. While my flight is not for three weeks, the reality of my trip is setting in. I have already said goodbye to some of my friends from Clark as they travel to their own study abroad programs. Their pictures are on Facebook and I have already Skyped with a friend doing the London Internship Program (who has readily fallen in love with the UK). All of these departures are making me more excited and a bit anxious to go....Which leads me to what I will be doing when I'm abroad...
As a Psychology major at Clark I have had a lot of opportunities to participate in research and have consequently gained a strong interest in conducting research myself. The EuroScholars program was a perfect opportunity to do just that. Hosted in 7 different European countries at 12 Universities, EuroScholars allows students to conduct original research in their field of interest. As a Women's and Gender Studies major as well, I knew I wanted to explore this discipline. This led me to the University of Geneva's Affective Sciences Program that has a research section devoted to Gender and Power. I will be working in that field under the supervision of a few of the research professors. This semester we will be starting a new research project that looks at international maternity leave policies and their effects on stereotypes and prejudices against women as well as empowerment of women. This project is also in collaboration with the University of Neuchâtel in Switzerland. While I will be researching in Geneva I will also hopefully travel to the research lab there a few times. Broadly speaking, I will do literature research, questionnaire preparation, data collection, data analysis, and will write a final research paper. This will work out to be about 24 hours a week dedicated to research.
EuroScholars provides students with two program options. Option 1 is a higher research focus that includes a research project, a Methods and Literature Review course, and a Language and Culture course while Option 2 has less of a focus on research and includes an elective course. I chose Option 1 and will therefore be spending most of my time doing research. I will only be taking one class- French Language and Culture. Switzerland is an interesting country as it is relatively small but has four official languages; French, German, Italian and Romansh (the latter spoken by a small minority). Geneva is directly on the French border and therefore mainly uses French whereas if I was to have studied in Zurich I would have studied German. Thankfully, Geneva is an international city that is home to an array of IGOs and NGOs so my English-speaking self won't get too lost.
So until then I will be here in Worcester, debating the seemingly mundane; whether to pack my alarm clock or buy one when I arrive in Switzerland. And I will continue to live vicariously through my classmates' travels as I wait for my flight to take off...Au revoir!
Cat
