With financial support from STEP, the Office of Diversity and the College of Food, Agricultural and Environmental Science I was able to fund a study abroad trip hosted through Ohio State to New Zealand for my Signature Project. We spent 4 weeks traveling from city to city on the South Island for a program called Sustaining Human Societies and the Environment.

Having the opportunity to attend this trip was transformational for me personally because working to get there as well as adjusting to being there pushed me in a way that I had never been pushed before. While making preparations for the trip; I had a fairly heavy course load, was working as a president to get a student organization off the ground and plan events, and was also working the maximum hours most weeks at a dining hall to save the money I needed for my budget. The journey before the trip alone made me feel a lot stronger, but once I got there it hit me with how incredibly fast paced we were moving both through the country and the course material. I had a lot of anxiety about traveling internationally for the first time and not having any sense of stability. Even with a few bumps here and there, I still managed to get A’s in both courses and can still say overall I enjoyed my stay and would like to return someday.

As far as on an academic and professional level, this trip was transformational as a values clarification as well as by giving me a lot of ideas about where I can go with the degree that I earn at Ohio State. I got to hear from and speak to a lot of really knowledgeable people concerning sustainability, conservation, restoration, ecology and eco-tourism; as well as got a lot of information from residents about development and the social climate in their areas. It showed me what kind of work goes into trying to provide people with the resources and amenities that they need in an efficient way so that future generations can do the same. Of course the country itself is beautiful, and with plans to return for leisure one day and see more places like it the experience created a clearer picture of the natural capital we are trying to preserve by working to combat climate change.

A really useful aspect of this trip for me was the group project tied into our course grade. For the project we were required to interview at least 10 individuals from different cities we staying in throughout the trip. Using their testimonials, we used quantitative evidence to draw conclusions about whether or not the eco-tourism industry New Zealand was economically and environmentally sustainable according to public opinion. We asked them general information like how long they had been a resident, what they did for a living and if it depended on the environment in any way. From there we discussed whether they though tourism was properly managed in their area, what improvements they would like to see in any sector and how they felt about the state of the environment. Our findings largely pointed to that residents felt that tourism could be economically and environmentally sustainable in New Zealand provided the government intervene more to provide the necessary infrastructure and create more restrictive caps on how many people can enter the country and participate in certain activities depending on their impact. Having the opportunity to speak at length with people of various backgrounds there made me feel like I had a strong understanding of some of the neoliberal politics there rather than just being a tourist or a clueless student.

One of my favorite towns we stayed in was Motueka, a small community that many tourists passed through while visiting the Able Tasman National Park or the nearby apple orchards. The settlement was teeming with small businesses owned and run by locals, and the community cohesion was very strong there. One issue in a lot of cities overrun by tourism was that they largely only had low wage service jobs, and the workers were treated very poorly. The owner of a store where local artists and entrepreneurs could sell their pieces told about how campers were provided specifically for service workers if they couldn’t afford anything else, and they had monthly meetings at their church where workers could meet to build friendships as well as discuss any issues they were having. I also was able to speak to an elderly volunteer that worked at a resale shop where a large portion of their earnings were donated to the terminally ill in the nearby hospital. Having taken a course on community development the previous semester, it was really interesting to see some of those concept at play in a real life case study.

Also in relation to community power, at the very end of our trip we stopped in a city called Christchurch that was recovering from a series of earthquakes and aftershocks that had left much of the area inaccessible. The city’s economy previously depended on tourists visiting their beautiful cathedrals and on being a center of trade, but since the earthquakes had to transition to what is called “disaster tourism.” Such a tour entails passing through or near condemned or demolished sites, memorials and temporary structures. To replace one of their cathedrals they had something called a “cardboard church,” made of collapsible and recyclable materials and insulated by cardboard piping. The old mall is now operating solely out of dressed-up shipping crates, and the disaster has created a market for new businesses such as the bar Smash Palace to also profit off of tourism. Most notably, during one of the first earthquakes a poorly designed building collapsed “pancake style” and killed around 200 people inside. Incidents like this are helping to inform officials and architects on how things should be done to better prepare and protect residents from future earthquakes.

A lot of my family and friends encouraged me to wait to study abroad until another semester, and although deciding to do so post haste was challenging I felt it was important to push myself to achieve something other people did not think I could do. The transformation that came from being able to go and coping with being there has improved my confidence in my abilities, and also serves as experience for future trips I hope to plan for work. Now that I have a better idea of how my coursework can be applied in the job market, I will have more direction this upcoming spring as I look into internship opportunities for next summer that will be an asset to my future. Lastly, being immersed in the culture, politics and natural environment of New Zealand has broadened my perception of issues outside the United States more so than before, and in the long term will help me to think critically about matters of sustainability internationally.