Amidst the excitement and anxiety on Feb. 17, the night of the Global Reveal, one couldn’t help but have a sense of disappointment after the end of the event. Despite the bright and happy yellow envelopes containing a student’s study abroad nomination and the celebratory but cliché “Send Me On My Way” by Rusted Root playing overhead, it felt like the whole event was a bit of a let down.
Global Reveal, hosted in the Magness Arena, is a fairly new event at the University of Denver. During this event, students who applied to study abroad programs all over the world finally get to know where they will be heading in the fall.
While the official event has only been happening since last year, I expected it to be more organized and fun in general. To receive our brightly packaged nomination we were required to stand in a line that could take up to 20 minutes while everyone else was crammed into a hot hallway as they waited to be taken downstairs. In fact, the entire Global Reveal seemed to be all one-hundred-something of us crammed together waiting for something to happen. I wasn’t entirely surprised when the majority of people took their envelopes and then left to go celebrate by themselves.
Another issue I had was with what was supposed to be the “main event.” After having waited for about half an hour, we finally got to open our nomination envelopes and rush to our groups to meet and celebrate with people from our prospective programs. However, instead of it all being organized by school or by country, it was organized by region, such as the Americas, Oceania, the UK, East Asia and “the rest of Europe.” Because of this, it was difficult to actually meet people from your specific program, especially if you were in groups like the UK which had about fifty people clustered together. I was hoping that DU would have facilitated meeting people from our programs more or encouraged returnees to come to the Reveal to tell us more about the program.
The last let down of the night was definitely the food. While I did not personally taste any of it, the 50 person long line waiting for about five containers of what looked like dry rice and burnt spring rolls was enough for me to prematurely judge it.
Though the “celebration” was mainly a let down, there were a few positives to the event. Finding out where I’ll be studying abroad surrounded by all my friends isn’t an experience I’d ever give up, not to sound too cheesy. Plus, in the end, we all got to go home with a nifty luggage tag to take on our travels.
All in all, though, it was a disappointment. For something that’s been so widely talked about, I went home feeling like I had few positive things to say.
