Most students sit impatiently through their two days of classes before Thanksgiving break, but some start their break early, leaving professors wondering what to teach in spottily attended classes.
"Planes, Trains, Automobiles and COVID-19" is the fourth episode of the semester of The Miami Student's podcast, Behind the Brick, which is released bi-weekly on Fridays. In this episode your host Anna McDougall discusses the ins and outs of studying abroad pre-pandemic and during a pandemic. She is joined by her friend, Connor Osmond as well as Miami’s Global Programs Coordinator Annalee Jones and Miami’s Global Learning Coordinator Dave McAvoy.
This year, Miami was named a top-producer for Fulbright, a program that sends its grant recipients to study and work abroad in foreign countries. Miami currently touts five alumni, all ETAs, abroad on Fulbright grants for the 2020-2021 academic year.
I put time and effort into my airport outfits. I always have. The night before my flight, I lay it out down to the socks and underwear at the foot of my bed like I did on nights before field trips in elementary school.
Taking advantage of online classes, some Miamians are leaving Oxford behind in favor of traveling around the country this year.
My parents and I had flown into Costa Rica for a family vacation the night before and spent the night in a hotel close to the airport. Today was the first of three stops of our trip: a bed and breakfast called Casa Rural — Aroma de Campo (Country House — Smell of the Land).
“Tiene hambre?” Are you hungry? I snapped back to reality after spacing out as I watched a group of four and five-year-olds jump rope. “Sí, claro,” I said offhandedly. Of course I was hungry, all I’d had for breakfast was pancito — bread, made cuter with a -cito tacked on the end — with strawberry jam. And it was nearly 1 p.m. Juan opened his camouflage lunch box and rummaged around for a moment before he found what he was looking for. He handed me a mango, first inspecting it to make sure the small dent in its skin hadn’t damaged the inside of the fruit. Suddenly, I felt the need to hold back tears.
Sitting in the tiny airport’s café, we waited for check-in time. When the time came, we got in line at the front desk, and I rummaged in my pockets for my backup phone. I came up empty—and it wasn’t in my purse, or my backpack, or my carry-on. “Don’t tell anyone else this,” I said to my friend Brooke, “But I’m going to go look for my phone.” “Julia, no,” she said, exasperated, but I was already gone.
Over the past couple of weeks, I’ve found it challenging to answer why I decided to go to Montréal in early January. The most truthful version is that I wanted to go somewhere over break, and my friend Charlotte suggested Montréal.
Eat your heart out, Eden Park. Sawyer Point is indubitably the most beautiful place to connect with nature while in Cincinnati. Just an hour out from Oxford, the park is the perfect place for a weekend day-trip. It was created in 1988 to celebrate the city’s bicentennial and conserve the riverfront. Since then, it’s been the site for the traveling Tall Stacks steamboat celebration, the Labor Day fireworks show and the Bunbury music festival.
This fall break I got to live out everyone’s wildest dream: I piled into a large, white van with nine other college comedians and drove through some of America’s flattest, most corn-infested farmlands. That’s right, Sketched Out Improv was headed to Chicago.
