“Get comfortable with being uncomfortable” is a mantra I try to live by and I would recommend that everyone do the same. All too often we find ourselves staying in situations that we have always been in because of the comfort that comes from knowing everything about that situation. In my case, I grew up in a small town where everyone knew me and I dated the same boy for most of my grade school years. Here recently, though, I’ve been rather homesick for places I have never even been.

For this reason, I have decided to spend my money on experiences and not on things, and I think that you all should do the same. The best way to start exploring this beautiful world we live on is through a study abroad program as this opportunity not only gets you abroad but allows you to get ahead in your classes by giving you credit hours for coursework you complete while abroad.

Now, you may be thinking “I am only a college kid I don’t have $10,000 or more to blow on a semester or summer abroad” well then, I say to you “you are in luck!” There is a rather cheap study abroad happening this summer in Szeged, Hungary (with an excursion to the capital, Budapest). In total the estimated cost of this trip is around $5,500 (loans will cover this!) for a total of 4 credit hours in anthropology or biology 4550 which gives students the opportunity to explore a collection that “contains the skeletal remains from over 30,000 skeletons recovered from archaeological excavations from southern Hungary dating from the Neolithic to the 1800s. Students will systematically collect standard anatomical skeletal data from one archaeological collection consisting of approximately 100 skeletons. The collected data will then be analyzed to examine demographic and health trends within the population.” The goal of this trip is to analyze skeletal remains and identify health markers and other characteristics of how the people lived.

This trip would be a valuable experience for anthropology majors or any pre-med/biology majors. I, myself, am a microbiology major with an anthropology minor and am planning to join the Peace Corps then attend medical school. This trip would be great for students with similar ambitions as it allows you to learn about the culture of a new place and explore skeletal remains prior to similar experiences in medical schools.
 

If you’re interested in applying for this trip or getting more information the link to the brochure is: https://terradotta.app.clemson.edu/index.cfm?FuseAction=programs.ViewProgram&Program_ID=12182

and the email for Dr. Weisensee, the professor in charge of the trip, is [email protected].

The application due date is February 1, 2019 and the trip takes place July 6-July 28, 2019.