Yale-NUS students embark on unique post-exchange semester opportunities

After a semester abroad, many students may choose to return home to pursue other opportunities or simply enjoy some downtime after a busy semester. However, some may choose to extend their overseas stint to explore new experiences.

Yale-NUS students Benjamin Chong and Denyse Tan (both Class of 2024) were two such students who decided to remain abroad after completing their exchange semester in the United States.

Benjamin in Yale University, New Haven, Connecticut. Image provided by Benjamin Chong.

Benjamin, who majors in Psychology, spent his exchange semester at Yale University, where he took modules in clinical psychology. At Yale, Benjamin had access to many clinical psychology faculty and through them, had the opportunity to gain exposure to different areas in clinical psychology.

During his exchange semester, Benjamin reached out to Dr Woo-Kyoung Ahn, a psychology professor who taught him one of his favourite classes, Topics in Psychology: Thinking, for a research position in the summer and was offered the role. Explaining his research, Benjamin said, “I worked with Dr Ahn and her PhD candidate Annalise Perricone to create a combined intervention that sought to improve people’s perceptions of the efficacy of psychotherapy.”

The research experience ended up being influential for Benjamin’s professional aspirations. “The experience of working in Dr Ahn’s lab has uplifted my outlook on a possible career in psychology. The experiment I worked on, which I will be replicating for my final year capstone, is an exciting intervention that I can see real-life applications for. Hopefully, I can contribute more to this field of research in the future,” he shared.

As for his motivations for extending his time at Yale, Benjamin said, “The connections and friends that I made in my semester abroad had a big impact on my decision to go back for research. I think I also just jumped at the opportunity to go back and eat more of the good food in New Haven and New York,” he said.

Benjamin also decided to do things differently over the summer by living with an elderly couple in New Haven. “My hosts were genuinely lovely, and they blessed me with a truly American 4^th of July,” he added.

Benjamin’s extended stint abroad was ultimately rewarding in further developing his academic and professional interests as well as in allowing him to solidify the familiar connections he had made earlier in the semester.

Denyse in the Boston Public Library, Boston, Massachusetts. Image provided by Denyse Tan.

Elsewhere along the east coast of the US, Denyse worked as a Geospatial Research Intern at the Leventhal Map Education Center (LMEC) at the Boston Public Library. Prior to her internship, Denyse spent her semester at Wellesley College where she also had the opportunity to cross-register and take classes at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).

Denyse was able to further her interests in queer and postcolonial geographies as well as global urbanism at both these institutions. “At Wellesley, I had the opportunity to explore my interests through classes such as Queer Media and Cinema and Transnational Feminisms, while also taking classes under the Department of Urban Studies at MIT,” she said.

It was at MIT where Denyse had first heard of the LMEC. During a guest lecture at her Geographic Information Systems class, Denyse learnt about the work that the LMEC did and was curious to find out more. Thereafter, she applied for and secured a summer internship at LMEC.  Denyse shared that it was the enriching experiences she had at Wellesley and MIT that led her to believe that a research internship in Massachusetts could offer a similarly invigorating environment for her academic endeavours. “The opportunity to learn from and meet scholars in my field, engage in interdisciplinary research, and contribute to meaningful projects was definitely something I wanted to do,” she said.

As a geospatial intern, Denyse’s work involved georeferencing historical atlases of Boston as part of the Atlascope project. “It gave me a newfound appreciation for the geographical and historical context of the place I called home for the six months,” she shared. Denyse also got to work on an independent research project that cast a feminist lens on the intersection of new digital technologies and the archive.

Reflecting on her experience, Denyse said, “My summer internship experience at LMEC was very fruitful – I got to dig deeper into Boston’s history and engage broadly with mapping practice and geographic knowledge. I’m also building on some of the ideas that I gained from my experiences in my final year capstone.”

For students, spending an extended time away from their home institutions could present a great deal of uncertainty. However, for some, like Benjamin and Denyse, taking the bold steps to shape their academic experiences have reaped fruitful and useful learning outcomes that endure even after their time abroad.