In The Abbey and On the Road (page3)

Their journeys have taken them outside their comfort zones and into worlds they could have never imagined. “My friend Kelley and I wound up staying with a family in Greece we happened to meet for four days,” Frierson says. “I had the best time in the world. They entertained us and didn’t want us to leave.”

Jeff Wood, a junior at Southeastern Louisiana University, also discovered the generous side of Europeans. “During my midterm break I forgot my razor, so I went two weeks without shaving, and while I was in Barcelona, a woman thought I was a bum and tried to give me money. Do I call that learning in a formal sense or just remember it as part of my Abbey time,” questions Wood?”

Others had more moving experiences. “Seeing Dachau was something I’ll never forget,” says Black. “You can actually feel something haunted there just by walking around. My friends from Michigan said it felt like the presence of all the souls of the people who died there.”

Despite visiting a list of destinations that would make a travel agent jealous, the one experience virtually all agree has made the biggest impact is the Abbey program itself. With professors from the University of Southern Mississippi, Emory University, the University of Wisconsin, and The University of Angers in France, students at The Abbey get an education that’s up close and personal

“At a big university, you don’t really know your teacher, you don’t really know your classmates, it can be real impersonal,” explains Black. “Here you know your teacher personally. They’ve very passionate about what they’re teaching, it’s almost contagious.”

“I really love the small classes,” Frierson adds. “When you’re in a big auditorium class with 100 people you don’t know, you really don’t want to raise your hand asking what might turn out to be a dumb question. Here’s that’s not a problem. They just let us talk and argue and sometimes get out of the way.”

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