PHS Student Follows Passion By Studying Abroad in Japan

Candace Braun

The idea to study abroad came to Princeton High School student Jessie Goodman one afternoon when she was walking home from school and discovered a discarded flyer on the ground. It was advertising the American Field Service (AFS), a program which places students in programs around the world.

Jessie knew right away where she wanted to go. Before she knew it, she was off to Hiroshima, Japan, where she spent six months of her junior year of high school.

Jessie, now 17 years old and ready to begin her senior year, first took an interest because her grandmother is from Japan, where she met Jessie's American-born grandfather during World War II. Jessie had visited her extended family in Japan twice, and had studied the country several times for school projects.

"I know more Japanese than my dad does. He can't speak any," she said, recalling that her father grew up in Kentucky and had little exposure to Japan.

Only a sophomore when she first learned about AFS, Jessie spent 10 months applying for the program, working with AFS and her school guidance counselors to accelerate her classes here so she would be prepared when she went abroad. She studied the Japanese language for two years at PHS before she left, and took an accelerated calculus course at Columbia University.

Jessie had several forms to fill out in order to study abroad: "In the end I had about 60 pages of paperwork."

It wasn't until she had to have her final papers signed by her parents that she clued them in on the trip: "It took me two weeks to convince them to let me go."

She enrolled in the Japan study abroad program for August 2004 through February 2005.

Once she arrived in Hiroshima, Jessie was situated with a host family: a mother and father with two grown daughters who no longer lived at home. While she was able to quickly form a bond with her "second parents," she had many difficulties in the beginning at her Japanese high school, since no English was spoken.

"For the first month it was horrible .... But by the end I was learning much more quickly," she said of her language skills.

Jessie took classes in Japanese, calligraphy, English, physical education, and calculus, which were all taught in Japanese.

Among the places she visited were Nara, Kyoto, and Osaka, all Southern cities in Japan, as well as Tokyo. But the best part of the trip, said the 17-year-old, were the friends she made while she was there.

"My [host] mother became my best friend for the six months I was there," said Jessie, adding that she also made several friends at school.

Since returning to the states this spring, Jessie continued her language studies by taking a semester of Japanese at Princeton University, which she plans to follow up with another year of the language during her senior year.

Now that Jessie is getting ready to start her last year of high school, she is forced to think about the future, and how her experiences abroad will affect the decisions she makes in the coming years.

"I want to go to Princeton University," she said, adding that she would like to continue studying Japanese as well as business, and eventually wants to work for a Japanese company, where she would have the opportunity to travel overseas.

She plans to study abroad again in college, and would like to become fluent in Japanese, as well as another foreign language.

"Language is very important. I'm now able to speak with a whole other country" she said, adding that while her father had been reserved about her passion for Japan, he seems to be excited for her.

Jessie said she would encourage all of her classmates to study abroad as well, because it changes your entire view of the world: "It allows you to see the world and not be as sheltered or ignorant of other people and cultures."

And while from the start Jessie was referred to as "the 24-year-old" in Japan because her maturity level far exceeded Japanese teenagers her age, she grew up even more while she was there.

"I learned a lot about life and how you really have to live it in that moment," she said. "You should do something you're passionate about ... and that's what I did."