Beneficial Effects of Overseas Travel - Essay Example

? Benefits of Overseas Travel The main source of the discovery of new lands, cultures and people that the world has seen have been through travels and voyages, way before media allowed people in different parts of the world, to witness the beauty of lands and people afar. However, the experience of a personal visit to a destination outside ones homeland cannot be undermined even today. Traveling in itself is not just been important for business purposes but has also provided man with educational, leisure and work opportunities and a means of discovery of the self and the other. Even today, people aspire from a young age to be able to travel the world and witness its beauty first hand, to meet and interact with people they have read of in books or watched on television and to find out for themselves how liberating an experience traveling overseas can be. Every individual traveling experience has to be relative to their own interests, temperament and world view but there are certain benefits to overseas travel that are applicable to every individual traveling outside of his own country, for either leisure, work or any other purpose, on a short or long term basis. The longer a person stays in a new place, the more time they will have to understand the place and its people more but even in a short span of time they will walk away with a new understanding and perspective of the place and its culture than they previously had. This paper will highlight traveling overseas as a learning experience that helps enhance a person’s creativity, his understanding of a new place, culture and a foreign language and along with these benefits, how the change allows the individual to create an understanding of his own culture and society in comparison to the new one that he witnesses. Since there is not strict empirical evidence relating these factors to overseas travel and it remains to a be a scantily researched topic, this research paper will use a questionnaire to interview people regarding their experiences of overseas travel and what they feel they learned or gained out of the experience. The questionnaire attached at the end of this paper includes open-ended questions that probe into the interviewees own personal thought and perspective. The Interview covers a random selection of five people with the pre-requisite of having traveled abroad for a short term trip lets say from within a week to three months and more. This could include people who went to a place for a leisure trip, for business or for a short term educational course. The findings have been incorporated into the paper. The learning on an overseas trip begins from the point where the person enters the terminal for international flights. As one moves ahead through check-in counter, one learns the laws and regulations regarding international travel. The swarms of people arriving and departing from the airport is a sight in its own where one experiences a place where no single culture is dominant, people of different ethnic backgrounds and belonging to different countries can been seen talking and waiting for their flights to depart. This is one place where a passenger will have a chance to observe his own people and their personalities and traits in comparison to those of people from around the globe. You may have heard of someone returning from an excursion and telling you about what different people were wearing at the airport or how they spoke etc. Also if you have a connecting flight and have a stop over at a certain airport on the way you will mention the food available and what you liked and disliked. A personal experience of this sort happened on a trip to Malaysia with a stop over in Bangkok. The Bangkok airport which is known to be one of the biggest and busiest airports allows you to meet and interact with people from so many different places. It is hard for a person to walk out without learning a new thing about the people from many parts of the world. I for instance found most people at the airport to be very fashion conscious. Nearly every male or female I saw that looked Asian was looking almost perfect as compared to people from this side of the continent in sneakers and shorts, basically in very causal attire. During the interviews I asked the five people on what they learned or experienced at the airports during an overseas trip. Every single participant had a different experience to share. In sum they all added that traveling overseas made them aware of a lot of international laws and regulations that they previously had no idea about. While some learned that they need to make sure their entire luggage is properly sealed and packed according to the allowed weight limit which helped them become more organized on a foreign trip, others met people and made acquaintances with them while waiting to board the plane which added to their social network. The fact that visiting another country allows one to interact with people from different cultural backgrounds has important implications for each individual. It has been argued by researches through empirical evidence that multicultural experiences can enhance creativity in an individual (Leung, Maddux, Galinsky, & Chiu, 2008, pg 1). Creativity is related to the birth of new and innovative ideas as well as discoveries which are enhanced according to these researches as an individual’s experiences grow. In the research the author’s argue through empirical evidence that when people from two or cultures meet and interact such as on a foreign trip, it enhances their ability to think and allows them to come up with better ideas and insights (Leung, Maddux, Galinsky, & Chiu, 2008, pg 2). However, it is important to note that the researchers also draw a connection between the lengths of the interaction or stay that the individual has within the foreign culture. The longer the stay and the more contact the person has with the people and place, the more he is likely to learn and hence generate better ideas and demonstrate creativity (Leung, Maddux, Galinsky, & Chiu, 2008, pg 2). Hence, we can argue that traveling overseas provides people with the ability to think creatively and come up with better ideas and solutions as people may similarly argue that a person well traveled has a better insight on things as compared to a person who has never stepped out of his town or country because such interactions play a huge role in shaping their knowledge of the world. One does not only learn in terms of creativity but a visit abroad also allows the opportunity for one to see different historical places which adds to the depths of one’s knowledge. Not empirically proven but a person who has read a historical fact in a book during school is less likely to remember it as opposed to a person who has personally visited that historical site. The memory of that visit will be much more deeply embedded as opposed to a chapter read in a book. This is not to undermine the importance of reading history or of classroom learning but only to emphasize that a first hand personal experience has a much greater and long lasting impact on a person’s mind than that written piece might have. In order to show this through our own qualitative research model, the participants were asked about the history of the places they had visited and how it affected their knowledge of the place before and after the visit. The results indicated that the participants did not have a clear knowledge of important historical events within the history of the place visited before they had been their as opposed to after their trip. They were most likely to remember the history of their own country and people through text books than that of other places. A personal visit to a historical site however, allowed them to not only gain knowledge of the history but to retain and recall it whenever they thought about their visit at a later date. Earline Byrd Orndorff has written his Doctorate in Education dissertation on “The short-term study travel experience for adult professionals: A phenomenological study”. This research is extremely helpful in understanding the effects of overseas travel on individuals who have to relocate to a new country for a short period of time. Although the participants of this study are in a country for a longer period of time than a normal leisure trip and their interaction with people and immersion into the culture is far greater than someone who visit the place for a week, their experiences and reaction are helpful in understanding a similar effect on people who visit a new location for a much shorter period of time. The results of this research can apply to leisure trips abroad but in different ways and perhaps to a lesser extent. The author argues that since discovery is one of the most direct ways of learning, experiential learning becomes the most effective in terms of bringing about a change in one’s perception (Orndorff, pg 11). The benefits of this educational travel on participants included a deeper understanding of not just the history of the places they visited but also the cultural contexts surrounding the theories (Orndorff, pg 12). The benefits of such an impact is to provide the traveler with a better world view and hence give them the ability to understand international events and politics in more detail rather than having a one sided perspective on them (Orndorff, pg 12).Another benefit highlighted by Orndorff is that of the knowledge of self. Orndorff argues that when a individual experiences a different culture, it provides them the ability to understand their own culture and a lot of the theories surrounding them they previously did not understand too well (Orndorff, pg12). Seeing how people in every corner of the world relate to a certain social setting and how their lives are automatically fitted to that social setting can answer a lot of questions one has in their mind about why a certain thing is they way it is in their own society. Thus international travel has been seen as many theorists as a essential to cultural awareness among people and important for important issues such as world peace, for it is only when ones biases about another culture are proved wrong through a personal experience that the person begins to see another in a positive light. Especially in today’s world where globalization has taken over the world and everyone seems to be interconnected, traveling plays a vital role in not just boosting cordial relations but also helps the economies of either country in a positive manner (Orndorff, pg 14). It is argued within this piece of research citing other literature that “world travel led to the development of self- confidence, empathy and reflective thought among participants” (Orndorff, pg 27) which not just showed greater maturity among participants but better attitudes and approaches and although the length of the stay determined how much of it one gained from the experience but even short term stays had lasting impacts on participants perceptions, knowledge and attitudes (Orndorff, pg 27). In order to assess through my own research I asked the participants what they felt they had gained through their travel experiences and whether it brought a change in their perception and attitude on returning home or not. According to the interviews the effects on the participants varied with regards to their own attitudes and perceptions even before they took the journey. While some immersed themselves in the foreign culture and gained greater knowledge of the new culture, their way of life and attitude, their cuisines, history and general attitudes and hence felt they returned home with a new thought process about the world which also effected their own approach towards life and their homeland, others took the leisure trips lightly but even they had some response to the new culture and what they saw but were more likely to forget the experience sooner than those who took greater interest and were curious by nature. Hence, one can argue that regardless of how long a person has stayed in a foreign country, the journey is bound to bring about some change in his though process and while there may be some negatives, the positive impacts outweigh them. Ordornff’s research study clearly indicates the positive that may be dependant on certain variables that are relative to each individual but can be summed up to show the positive impacts on the participants of overseas travel. The participants almost always walked away with greater knowledge about not just their surroundings but about themselves. The effects of the experience could be seen in them immediately or over a long period of time but their knowledge of the world, perceptions about different cultures in relation to their own, their own ambitions and wishes regarding employment or future plans were all positively affected by foreign travel (Orndorff). They also walked away with a memorable experience, greater social network, some knowledge of a new language and culture and hence better worlds view (Orndorff). A positive effect on the increase in cultural awareness led not only to rethinking of gender roles, family life style, food and alcohol consumption, understanding of different religions and rituals but also a better understanding of the history of the world which encouraged the people to make positive changes in their own lives or simply better relations with people from around the world (Orndorff). Similarly in my own qualitative research participants quoted stories of how before visiting a place they had some biases in perceptions with regards to the people and the place but they were pleasantly surprised to find a completely different picture of the place on a personal visit. Some made new friends with people they used to find very different from themselves and realized they were alike in many ways, while others walked away with a positive attitude towards different types of people and cultures. Other smaller benefits can also be highlighted in terms of personal experiences. One interviewee related his story of how he has learned to be better organized on a trip. He had an experience of losing a valuable camera while on an overseas trip simply because he put the camera in his luggage without lock on the bag or a security seal. Although a bad experience, he related to it as a learning experience whereby he realized what he should avoid on future trips and how he should prepare himself for the outside world. Other small experiences such as getting lost in a new city and having to find the way were also related by participants who said they learned better methods of avoiding such blunders while in a foreign country and within these experiences were their positive feedback for example, on a local passerby who helped them find the route they were looking for or how hospitable and warm the people were which left them with good memories of the place and its people. Hence through this paper we can conclude that although research on the benefits of overseas travel cannot be easily found, there is a lot available on the personal experiences that people have had on a foreign trip and what they felt they gained from the trip. I have highlighted through literary works and my own empirical research how overseas travel can have a positive effect on the travels not just in terms of greater knowledge, cultural awareness, but empathy and positive perceptions about different people and places that are enhanced in the greatest manner only through a personal visit to the place and firsthand interaction with people from multicultural backgrounds. Whether traveling for short or long term, the participants almost always return with a new approach and attitude towards the world and the increase knowledge of different people and historical backgrounds allows them to bring about positive changes in their own lives. Works Cited: Leung, Angela Kay-yee, Maddux, Willliam W., Galinsky, Adam D., & Chiu, Chi-yue. (2008). Multicultural experience enhances creativity: the when and how. American Psychologist, 63(3), doi: 10.1037/0003-066X.63.3.169 Orndorff, Earlines Byrd. United States. Short-Term Study Experiene for Adult Professionals: A Phenomenological Study. Blacksburg, Virginia: 1998. Web. 1 Apr 2011.http://scholar.lib.vt.edu/theses/available/etd5299810527/unrestricted/dissertation.PDF Read More