On December 31st, 2025 Mya Proctor - then a Michigan State University junior - left Detroit for Lille, France. She was about to embark on one of the most comprehensive study abroad programs possible for MSU students, planning to spend over six months studying in France and traveling Europe. Today, she reveres the life-changing experience she had, and encourages everyone to sign up for study abroad even if it seems unrealistic. But how did she make it possible? That story starts a few years earlier, with the journey to her major in Women’s and Gender Studies (WGS).

    While Mya came to MSU as a James Madison College student, her career goals and deepest values first found a home in her Intro to Women’s and Gender Studies course with Pat Arnold. Seeing how former students - now lawyers at the ACLU, directors at Planned Parenthood, and legal counsel to Gov. Whitmer - were able to combine their passion for gender equity and women’s rights with a career path in law, Mya sought out advanced seminars that would develop her knowledge, confidence, and voice, such as WS307 Women of Color Feminisms with Dr. Alejandra Márquez. “I think the different theories of philosophy, sociology, anthropology, all mixing together in Women's and Gender Studies was really, really interesting to me and tickled my brain in a way that JMC was kind of just flatlining,” reflects Mya. 
Finding her true home at MSU meant more than just discovering the kind of research that resonated with her most. Mya also loved the classes for the mutual respect, empathy, and community they fostered, allowing students to speak on their experiences and histories: “Learning from each other, while also learning the theory, and learning from past examples of people writing books or whatnot really just makes it more palpable to understand, and learn, and leave feeling like you can see the way that theories interact with actual people." 
    As Mya approached her pivotal senior year with a now-concrete career goal of global gender equity law and policy, the missing piece was getting real-world international experience. The usual route for this - highlighted by the fact that MSU remains one of the top U.S. universities for abroad options - would be a traditional summer abroad. A conversation with her WGS advisor, Pat Arnold, from months prior kept coming back to her: Why not spend an entire semester abroad? Nothing would validate her resume and her international experience more. But how could it be feasible - not just in terms of the transfer credit and finances, but even the logistics of traveling, housing, and cultural integration?
    Mya’s problem-solving abilities, vital for a future in law, became clutch. “I wanted the experience of booking it for myself and these real-world experiences of having to go and get a visa, having to find housing, booking my flights. I just thought that it was important for me to learn how to do this and I would have never had another opportunity to learn from that process.” Working closely with Pat, Mya identified a range of universities in Europe that provide credits that transfer back and even double-count across her majors. With tuition more affordable in Europe than the U.S., scholarships from her Colleges went further than they would in a usual semester at MSU. Barriers became boxes checked off in her to-do list before departure and the initial anxiety became an energizing source of self-confidence: “Every little thing just seems scary. And then you get there and you see it and you're just like, it's not as scary as I thought [...] I woke up every single day waking up to France, like I'm in France. And that feeling of pure ecstasy never went away, ever.”

    Once accepted into the program, Mya had two months before her flight out of the country. These months were packed with preparation. Before Mya could obtain a visa, she had to find housing — which she ended up booking sight unseen. Then, Mya had to make an appointment at the French embassy in Chicago, which MSU scholarships were able to cover. “You have to be willing to put in all the work to get yourself there. You have to be willing to fight back against the barriers,” she said. “The whole process is really nerve-racking but you kind of just have to have faith that it'll all work out in the end.” 
Mya arrived at the University of Lille as only one of ten Americans in the new class of over 400. Though she was taking five courses, the class schedule was only Monday through Wednesday, leaving her with four-day weekends to travel Europe. “Life is a lot slower in Europe,” she notes, and the semester included more breaks than the typical U.S. university. While travelling during the semester (from the Netherlands and Germany to Norway and Sweden), Mya learned a multitude of ways to reduce costs. Booking hostels, utilizing Caisse d'Allocations Familiales (CAF - government subsidized housing), finding the cheapest forms of transportation, and staying at the houses of university friends made a semester in Europe remarkably affordable. She also found that many forms of transportation, tourist attractions, and housing were cheaper if you provided documentation of being a student. All this allowed Mya to spend over six months abroad - all while using the accessible transit system in Europe to visit new cities and countries nearly every week. 

    Building this program into her future career, Mya explains that “what I most want to do in the US would be fighting for human rights and women's rights, and I think that I could transfer that really easily to an international perspective by studying international human rights.” For instance, her capstone project at the University of Lille compared parental leave policy in the U.S. to that in France, where mothers get a nationally-mandated 16 weeks of paid leave. In combination with France’s support for paternity leave, subsidies for live-in nurses, and robust public education, Mya saw new possibilities for women and families in the US, as well as a host of progressive policies to advocate for in her future career. When asked if there is anything she would change about her experience, Mya had a simple answer: “No.” She further explained, “I feel like everything happens for a reason and I learned so much from the hard things that I went through, and the visa process, and there's nothing that I would take back.” 
“You see so much beauty and there's so much more to the world than you can see on a map and hear about, it can be your life [...] seeing it in real life makes such a difference to your studies.”

Interested in studying abroad over winter break, summer, or for an entire semester like Mya? Chat with the WGS advisor, Pat Arnold, and explore your options - from France and London, to India and Malawi! Visit us in the International Center 206.