When I first opened my study abroad application, I could barely contain my excitement as I scrolled through the seemingly endless program options.

Coming into Northwestern, I had a romanticized image of traveling abroad. Hearing story after story of a life-changing quarter of fun and adventure led me to believe the experience would be perfect and stress-free. Meeting new people. Visiting new places. Monuments and beaches to not-so-subtly flaunt on Instagram.

A few days later, I found myself on my laptop late at night, staring at a list of countries’ views on China. My heart sank.

Some of the places I’d been most excited to see, like Japan or the Netherlands, were ranked high for anti-Chinese sentiment. In another tab, my unfinished application lay blank, waiting for me to return.

In the past, I had mostly travelled domestically with my family. But even then, I’d felt unsafe in the most unassuming places. A sidewalk in Pittsburgh, where teenagers yelled “Ching Chong!” at me from their truck as they sped by. A cruise ship in Toledo, Ohio, where a drunk stranger at least a decade my senior waited until I was alone to hit on me, telling me he was “surprised I even spoke English” after I told him I wasn’t interested.

If that was my experience in the U.S., what could I possibly encounter overseas? Where could I go that would guarantee a safe and discrimination-free quarter abroad? Was that even possible?

It had never occurred to me that I had to be so wary of my identities and how I might be perceived because of them while studying abroad. No one I’d talked to had warned me, either.

As I began to research different countries, I found article after article seemingly written by and for affluent, white students. They certainly didn’t help address any of my fears. “Don't be afraid to take some crazy risks,” read a Buzzfeed compilation of study abroad advice. “Those make the best stories, after all.”

But for many Northwestern students who hold marginalized identities, simply existing in these countries can be the biggest risk of all.

When Medill third-year Amar Shabeeb went abroad to Berlin, Germany last summer, she was eager to learn more about the country’s politics. However, as a Muslim Syrian-American, Shabeeb was also concerned about being targeted because of her religious and ethnic identity. That worry, combined with the recent rise of several far-right parties in the country, pushed Shabeeb to research more.

“Unless you're of a marginalized identity, you don't have to think about [xenophobia],” says Shabeeb. “It's not a consideration for you, or whether or not you're studying abroad, especially in Europe. But for me, it was the first thing I thought about.”

Weinberg third-year Stella Lin’s quarter abroad was stressful from the start. As a first-generation and low-income student, she was worried about the cost of traveling to Europe for the global health program she’d applied for. In addition, Lin switched career paths and had to recruit for consulting jobs while taking challenging courses in France.

Then, one night, Lin and her roommate were riding their scooter back to their host mom’s apartment when a passing car swerved towards the two as if to hit them. Frightened, both girls fell off their scooter. The car drove off; those inside jeered “Ni hao!”

“We were both just shaken afterward and tried to get home as quickly as possible,” Lin says. “Even in America, I’d never experience such blatant racism, so it was a big wake-up call. It definitely made me more scared to go out at night.”

In the context of race and ethnicity, “passing” describes when a person of one racial group or ethnicity is frequently perceived to be another, most commonly due to variation in skin tone. Sociologists consider passing advantageous; if a person of color (POC) is white-passing, they are less likely to be discriminated against on account of their race.

When I was in high school, my class traveled to Paris for the summer. Before we left, my teacher told us to follow French fashion so we were less likely to be recognized as tourists. For me, a visibly Asian person, it only took a look in the mirror to doubt that anyone would see me as a French citizen, regardless of my outfit.

When studying abroad, someone who is white or a white-passing POC will likely find it easier to blend in when visiting a predominantly white country. But for Shabeeb, there was little ability to hide religious identity in public.

“I’m Syrian, so I’m pretty pale,” says Shabeeb. “But because I wear a hijab, that identities me as someone who’s not stereotypically German.”

Because she is visibly Muslim, Shabeeb said she endured hostile encounters in more conservative areas. As she entered a restaurant in the city of Weimar, a couple exiting loudly shushed her— despite her not making any noise. In Prague, Czech Republic, a stranger approached her at a train station, told her that the Czech Republic was a Christian country and handed her pamphlets about why Christianity was the superior religion.

McCormick second-year Kenya Alexander, who also studied in Berlin that summer, was with Shabeeb at the train station. The two had also been together in Prague, standing outside of a museum when a stranger came up behind Alexander and, without warning, grabbed her hair. Before either of them could even react, the man ran off.

“I was just very startled,” Alexander says. “I sometimes forget that I'm visibly POC in these places that may not have as many POC people. But I think that was the moment I just felt kind of othered, because I don't know why you would do that to a regular person standing on the street.”

Being ethnically Chinese but born and raised in the United States, I often walk a fine line between two cultures. I feel at home in the United States, but I’ve grown up seen and treated as a foreigner. I look at home in China, but I feel awkward navigating a culture I know little about and speaking a language I have a third-grade vocabulary in.

Understanding a country’s native language can make one's experience abroad much easier. It’s especially crucial when that language is used to discriminate.

While in Germany, Shabeeb witnessed some friends (who were also POCs) being called “ausländers”— “foreigners” in English— and told to go back to their own countries. Not having a full grasp on the local tongue left her particularly exposed to verbal attacks.

“Something that we actually had to articulate to a few people on the trip is, ‘If you guys see something happening, you have white privilege. Say something. Especially if you're fluent in German,’” says Shabeeb. “It's really hard to defend yourself against racism and Islamophobia in a language that's not your native tongue.”

When Medill fourth-year Nefertari Bilal studied in Jordan, she saw a stark difference in how people of the country would treat her classmates. White students who spoke Arabic would be surrounded by crowds on the street. Students of color speaking the same language rarely had the same response.

“I felt kind of invisible,” says Bilal. “Nobody really cared to talk to me. To be honest, I really felt a depression because I'm trying so hard to connect with people and get outside of my bubble. But I'm finding that I'm being prejudged just by virtue of my appearance alone.”

For first-generation and low-income students, thinking about the cost of travel can greatly impact their overseas experience. While Lin did face discrimination because of her race, she says feeling unsafe wasn’t the biggest issue she encountered while in France. Instead, she struggled more with managing her budget throughout the course of the quarter. Her provided meal plan covered breakfast and dinner during the weekdays, but everything else was up to students.

“For most of those other meals, I would just eat toast or buy really cheap bread from the bakery, or things like that,” says Lin. “Whereas I would see a lot of my classmates go and eat at nicer places and go to fancy restaurants.”

Bilal also took affordability into account overseas. She’d spent a significant amount of her time at Northwestern abroad, travelling to countries like Panama and Vietnam. Before each trip, Bilal would not only plan out her finances, but also consider the potential impact of her identity as a black woman in every new country. Those hours of preparation helped Bilal feel better equipped in every new location she visited.

“I was never in fear,” says Bilal. “I was also really excited, and I did my homework, I did research on the culture and all the political situations of the places I went.”

While for many, socializing can be central to studying abroad, Bilal found she couldn’t spend time with as many people as she wanted to –– most of their plans involved spending money. In Jordan, she saw some students fly to Germany to celebrate Oktoberfest, then head to Lebanon the next weekend.

“I found [myself] throughout my experience sometimes feeling sad, and sometimes just a little bit resentful,” says Bilal. “Some people ... came from such a privileged background that they're like, we're going to go to this expensive, chic club and not thinking, ‘Hey, maybe some people can’t afford to spend all this money like that.’”

SESP fourth-years Ayana Davis and Gabriella Johansson were ecstatic when they found out they were both going to Granada, Spain fall of their junior year. The two were already good friends, and even though their Northwestern-affiliated program encouraged rooming with someone from a different school, they quickly decided to be roommates.

When visiting a different country, students often expect to experience a degree of “culture shock”: adapting to the array of different traditions, trends and experiences. In some places, however, cultural mores with deeper roots hamper that adjustment.

In Spain, Columbus Day, known as “Fiesta Nacional de España,” the annual celebration includes a military parade in Madrid and smaller festivities throughout the country. On this day, Granada celebrated Columbus, known for his colonization, enslavement and brutal treatment of indigenous Americans.

For Johansson, who has Puerto Rican and Mexican heritage, it was unbearable to watch. She left the city for the day.

When she returned that evening, Johnasson remembers feeling nervous when she asked her host mom about her day; she expected to hear about the festivities she missed. Her host mother said she’d done nothing; to her, too, it wasn’t a special day.

“I was like, ‘Oh, thank goodness, we'll be okay here,’” Johansson says.

Local citizens’ harmful turns of phrase also bothered the two. Corner stores, often run by East Asian immigrants, were casually referred to as “los chinos” — “the Chinese”— regardless of the ethnicity of the owner. One professor even used a slur during one of their classes, which Johansson reported to their program director.

“He was like, ‘I understand that it hurts you, but I'm not really gonna do anything to fix it’”, says Johansson. “[The professor] wrote an apology to the class and cried. But I didn't feel like I was leaving that program knowing that the things that I had talked to my professor about were not gonna happen again.”

There were struggles outside the classroom, too. Whenever she went out with friends, Davis sometimes felt afraid because of how she and other black women were targeted by clubgoers because of their appearance.

“Going to the club could be like a nightmare,” Davis says. “We were preyed on because they could tell we were foreign. I just have so many memories of being very much surrounded by European men.”

While in Spain, Davis and Johnansson spent most of their time with a group of friends consisting mostly of POC and LGBTQ+ students. One night, Johansson went out with a group of mostly white people to celebrate a friend’s birthday. The ease and comfort left her surprised.

“We had some tall men in our groups, so we were left alone,” Johnasson says. “We were approached before we even got in [to the club] to get free tickets to go in. It was just a less worrisome experience.”

For Davis and Johansson, living together in Spain provided essential support.

“A lot of the stuff that happened to us could have been a lot worse if we didn't have someone to go and talk to about it when we came home,” says Davis. “Having [Johansson] as my roommate was amazing because I could come home and be like, ‘Guess what happened today?’ and she's like, ‘No way, something similar happened to me.’”

While in Shabeeb and Alexander were in Germany, a program director set up a debrief session to allow students to share their thoughts. This led to conversations about ways the program could be changed to be more inclusive in the future, like taking out the trip to Weimar, where Shabeeb says many students of color had negative experiences.

On an institutional level, Northwestern’s Global Learning Office (GLO) includes a section on their website titled “Identity Abroad,” featuring resources inside and outside the school. Blogs and videos feature students of diverse backgrounds’ travel experiences, ranging from gender discrimination to accessibility. A country-specific directory details what students of different identities may encounter.

“Students of color may experience stares, people wanting to take pictures, overly curious or what may be perceived as inappropriate questions, or even blatantly racist statements,” reads one report on China. “Disturbing as they are, such experiences should be considered in relation to the considerable probability that any offense was unintended.”

It’s a depressing read, but the advice and warnings each report provides can be crucial for ensuring the safety of marginalized students going abroad to countries they’re otherwise unfamiliar with.

Even with these resources, however, Bilal says there’s room for improvement to make study abroad a more accessible and safe experience.

“There needs to be a much more candid conversation about how study abroad has struggled to really diversify the students that they're bringing to these countries,” says Bilal. “In both of my programs, I learned that they had just started a couple months ago even talking about race as part of their [orientation] lectures.”

Eventually, I finished my study abroad application and chose a Northwestern-affiliated program in Vienna. The classes intrigued me and the city itself looked beautiful. But even now, I still find that anxiety reappearing.

After all, part of the GLO’s report on Austria reads: “Racism in Austria is at its highest level [in] years according to a 2016 ZARA Racism Report. Incidents of everyday racism and hate speech directed towards minorities are frequently reported.”

This, combined with an increase in anti-Chinese sentiment around the globe, makes me afraid and unsure of how I might be treated abroad. But at the end of the day, I don’t want my life to be limited by the prejudice of others. And no matter what I may encounter, I might still gain something from the experience. To Shabeeb, the challenges she faced in Germany made her more resilient.

“It was very eye-opening,” says Shabeeb. “I got to see that xenophobia will follow me everywhere, unfortunately, but I'm able to handle it... the xenophobia I experience here [in the United States] is the same ignorance. The more I've been able to encounter it, the better I've been able to manage and handle it mentally. Which is kind of sad, but it is what it is.”