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Olivia Peters in the Netherlands

Olivia Peters in Utrecht during her trip to The Netherlands.

Adventure Awaits

Student travel experience yields new opportunities for one student

April 5, 2017 — 

Olivia Peters was encouraged by a professor to apply for a short summer experience in The Netherlands in the summer of 2016. During that experience she learned a lot about Dutch culture, spending time abroad, and about people at her home institution.

Olivia Peters is a criminology major at the University of Manitoba, and will graduate this year. She plans to go on to pursue a masters in Sociology next year, and says that she has enjoyed her time here. When a professor with whom she had been working placed the application in front of her to go on an international learning course, she found herself drawn to the opportunity. Ultimately, she and several other University of Manitoba students went on the trip paid for by the government of The Netherlands, and found themselves at a university in Nijmegen. Here they stayed in dormitories, studied Dutch culture and history, and travelled to other regions like Amsterdam and Utrecht.

The experience was excellent for Peters, who says that while she was not able to take advantage of a transfer credit system due to the length of her course, she viewed credit as a fringe benefit to the experience she gained during her time abroad. An anecdote she shared during her interview involved the young son of a Dean at the university where she was placed saying he and his friends knew to watch out for the red bicycles loaned to summer visitors, who were not quite as apt at bike riding as locals.

Peters also says she made plenty of valuable international friendships, people who she might one day visit in other parts of the world, or who might visit her here in Winnipeg. She views the experience as having broadened her horizons beyond anywhere she might have imagined before.

The Faculty of Arts and the University of Manitoba have many travel opportunities available to students, who can find out more about opportunities like the one Olivia Peters found by contacting the International Centre or Arts students can consult Travel & Exchange information on the Arts website.

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