Student Bloggers

Recently, the Arcadia Abroad team had a virtual meeting with Michayla George, the recipient of the ESU Luard Morse Scholarship for the 2023-2024 academic year. The meeting was an opportunity to learn more about Michayla’s journey and experiences planning for and studying abroad. Here is that exchange-

Arcadia Abroad: Tell us a bit about you! What year are you? What are you studying? 

Michayla George: My name is Michayla George. I am a rising junior at Tennessee State University in Nashville, Tennessee, and I'm currently majoring in Business Administration with a concentration on General Business and a minor in Spanish.

AA: What is your greatest motivation for studying abroad?

MG: I would say the biggest motivation for studying abroad is just to see the world and learn about the world. I grew up in an environment where so many children, so many of my peers, they just didn't know the world. They didn't know anything beyond our neighborhood. So to have an opportunity like this, I want to be able to experience that. 

And then I want to one day be in a position to provide those same experiences to other people who grew up in situations like me. That's the biggest thing I want to do.

AA: Have you traveled prior to this? Tell us a bit about your previous international experience. 

MG: I’ve traveled abroad twice. Before this year I had only been on a cruise to Mexico. Have you ever been on those? They're very American. I didn't have to speak Spanish at all, I didn't have to do anything. It's very catered towards American tourists. 

But this May I had the privilege of completing a Maymester program in Madrid, Spain. It was a cultural and language immersion program. I went with two professors and one other student from TSU. For two weeks we studied at a language school in Madrid, and we got to live with a host family, so it was Spanish all the time.  And I think it was a challenge at first, but you get used to it, and you learn a lot. So it was a really wonderful experience

AA: How did you decide on the Arcadia Abroad Queen Mary University of London program?

MG: What I really wanted was a university that had a lot of diversity in it, and something that Queen Mary talked about a lot was all the different places their exchange or visiting students come from. And I thought that would be a really wonderful opportunity to meet so many new people and just learn from their cultures.

The ESU Luard Morse Scholarship is a merit-based scholarship that provides $25,000 for students from Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) to study for a semester at a British university of their choice during their junior year. For more information, or to apply for this scholarship, visit https://www.esuus.org/esu/programs/luardmorsescholarships/ . The deadline to apply for the 2024-2025 school year is December 4th, 2023.