What are your career plans? Are you thinking of a career in business, law, politics, science, medicine or even the arts? Whatever it is, your chances for success increase dramatically when you study abroad for a year or two.

For example, you may be aware that China is increasingly integrating its economic system with that of the rest of the world, and may very well become the dominant economic power in the coming century. How will you, as a future American business leader, be prepared to deal with this reality? Yes, money talks and numbers are crunched the same way by accountants around the world ‘ but when it comes to developing the personal and professional relationships upon which businesses depend, you will find that people in Asia do things differently than in North America. When you study abroad, you will learn about these differences first-hand. This is knowledge that will not only look extremely good on your resume, it will also serve you very well in your business career.

As economic systems become increasingly global, so too will legal systems. A degree in international law is well and good, but the world and its legal codes are too vast for one person to be able to do it all.  Chances are that you will select one region on which to focus. A semester or two spent in that region will give you a deeper understanding of how legal systems differ from one place to another.

Of course, artists throughout history have drawn inspiration from cultures other than their own. Ancient India for example had a school of art historians term as “Indo-Hellenic” ‘ a blending of Hindu and Classical Greek techniques resulting from introduction of Greek culture to that region by Alexander of Macedonia some 2200 years ago. As an artist of composer educated in Western traditions, what inspirations might you find from the classical art of India or China?