One of the best kept secrets at UT is tucked behind a door on Melrose Avenue: the Programs Abroad Office, a porthole to the international community.

Studying abroad may sound out of reach: students think it's financially impossible; they can't fit it into a schedule or can't speak a foreign language. The list goes on.

But many options are available for financial aid, scholarships or programs no more expensive than a semester at UT.  Many programs also allow scholarships to transfer, so the slew of Hope Scholars already has a boost.

Recently, the Abraham Lincoln Study Abroad Fellowship Program, offering $50 million in funding to send American students abroad, was established.  In 2006, most study abroad students were white females making a pilgrimage to Europe.  The goal of this program is to send more than a million students abroad by 2017.

Studying abroad is the gold standard for the better educated.  It's an opportunity to learn about culture first-hand, learn a language, learn to adapt to world differences, become self-sufficient and self-aware.

We read about issues abroad, see movies about "blood" diamonds or young professionals chasing a dream, but how often do we dream about being the journalist sent to Africa to report on illegal exporting and civil wars?  How often do we wish we could work for a Fortune 500 company and sit with professionals at a conference table speaking knowledgably about world affairs — in Mandarin? It's not impossible. It's happening.

Studying abroad is the gold standard for the better educated.  It's an opportunity to learn about culture first-hand, learn a language, learn to adapt to world differences, become self-sufficient and self-aware.Rebecca Davis, a senior majoring in Nutrition, spent a summer in Tanzania helping educate and entire village about proper nutrition and how to grow crops to help sustain their village independently.  She also spent a semester in Fribourg, Switzerland, where she lived in a house with Opus Dei nuns.  She went from a UT-Flordia game to speaking Swahili while going on hunts with Massi warriors to proper meals and chapel services in Swiss-German — and all in 18 months! And to those people from Switzerland, the seven countries she traveled to in Europe and the Tanzanians, she is American, she is from UT.

Will Stinson, a recent graduate of the business program. Is spending a year In Macau, China as a recycling auditor for NuKote Designs.  He's fluent in Cantonese after spending a year studying abroad in China during his undergraduate career.  His experiences made him so valuable that his company will now be paying for his law school education.

Derek Sanders, a UT graduate, also spent a semester abroad.  He lived an worked in London and was on his regular route to work, which placed him two stops down from the London subway bombings.  While this may sounds like an experience you want to avoid, he was experiencing what we only heard about.  He got great images and quotes from people who work for those subway systems.  He, for a moment, became a citizen of London and shared in the fear and turmoil felt by the city.

Studying abroad comes in many shapes and sizes to fit your budget, study program and time-frame.  This is nothing to overlook and not to be taken lightly.  An entire new world is waiting to make an impression on you.  And you have an important impression to leave.