Interior design student Hailey Bisbee had been in Cape Town three weeks when she sat down to write about it. She had stood above the clouds on Table Mountain, watched penguins at Boulders Beach, learned to make samosas in a local woman’s home and interned at a nonprofit aiding autistic adults.
“I have proved to myself that I can travel, live and work internationally,” she wrote. “I can hike, swim, learn, dance, eat, travel, work, laugh, love and cry in a 24-hour span.”
Across the world this summer, Cal State Long Beach students did some version of the same thing: reflecting on what they had learned during internships, studios, laboratories and field schools thousands of miles from The Beach. As many now make their way back to campus, we asked five groups to share some of what they saw, learned and brought home with them.
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‘Out of my comfort zone’
In Cape Town, Bisbee and 12 others worked a variety of internships while learning about a country still shaped by the legacy of apartheid. Accompanied by Graphic Design Professor Tanya Cummings and open to all majors, the program took students to sites such as Robben Island, where Nelson Mandela was imprisoned, when they weren’t interning for local organizations and program through a partnership with VACorps.
For photography student Skylar Bush, that meant working at Bush Radio.
“My internship at Bush Radio pushed me out of my comfort zone in ways I didn’t expect,” Bush said. “This experience has not only expanded my understanding of the world but has also helped me better envision the kind of environments I want to be part of in the future.”