University Honors Program

By Tara McLoughlin

Every semester the University of Dayton sends students abroad to Madrid, Spain. This semester one of those incredible students is Junior Ariana Callaghan! Ariana is a Finance and Management major with a concentration in Global Markets. In Madrid, she is studying Mergers and Acquisitions, International Finance, International Marketing, Introduction to Marketing and Consolidation of Financial Statements. Below are some of the important stories and lessons she has learned since she started her journey of living in Madrid.

Ariana has lived in Madrid for about one month now and has been fortunate enough to visit so many incredible places such as Morocco, Segovia, Toledo, Valencia, Barcelona, Scotland, and Amsterdam. Her favorite place so far has been Morocco where she got to stay in a traditional Berber tent in the Sahara Desert. She went into the trip not knowing anyone but by the end had made a tight-knit group of friends and made memories that will last with her forever. In the day-to-day, one of the things Ariana has begun to do to help her transition to Europe is staying connected with her family. Pushing herself to make friends and navigate a big city like Madrid the learning in nonstop! She is in 15 credit hours at the business school that UD partners with and is learning all the time. The biggest lesson she said she has learned so far is that “it is perfectly alright to slow down and that studying abroad is your time to spend as you wish” when it is easy to be so fast paced and see everything it is important to make time for yourself to enjoy right where your feet are. 

If you are considering or have considered studying abroad here are some great tokens of advice that she gave: 

1. When considering if studying abroad is something for you first think, “think about if you didn’t do it, would you regret not going?” 
2. It is important to be in touch with yourself and think about not only the glamour of studying abroad, but also the difficulties. Self-reflection I think will help you decide if you would like to study abroad, but as someone who is here currently, I couldn’t recommend it enough!
3. Sometimes you have to push yourself outside of your comfort zone to grow as a person.

If you or anyone you know may be considering studying abroad and gaining some of these valuable experiences, take it from Ariana that this is a decision you will never regret. The Honors Program encourages and supports these kinds of experiential learning opportunities, and we hope that by reading about experiences like Ariana’s we can support more and more of our fabulous students in exploring and trying new passions and places!