Behrend Talks: A Penn State Podcast
Join Dr. Ralph Ford, Chancellor of Penn State Behrend, and guests for conversations about interesting things happening in the Erie community.
Behrend Talks: A Penn State Podcast
The student experience at Behrend and abroad, with Sophia DiPlacido
Dr. Ralph Ford, chancellor of Penn State Behrend, talks with Sophia DiPlacido, a 2025 graduate of the college, about her student experience, including a semester abroad in France. Originally recorded on May 7, 2025.
I'm Dr Ralph Ford, chancellor of Penn State Behrend, and you are listening to Behrend Talks. My guest today is Sophia DiPlacido, a new graduate of our Marketing and Psychology programs and a Schreyer Scholar here at Penn State Behrend. Sophia is a well-known on campus, highly engaged student, both here at Behrend and she has also gone abroad. We're going to talk a lot about that, about your semester in France. We have much to discuss today. Welcome to the show, Sophia.
Sophia DiPlacido:Thank you, Chancellor Ford.
Ralph Ford:Well, you know, as I said, you work in our Development and Alumni Relations Office, involved in a lot of student clubs and organizations. But let's go back. Why did you end up here at Penn State, Behrend?
Sophia DiPlacido:Yeah, so my initial college search was really broad. I applied to schools up and down the East Coast probably 12 different schools and then in the later half of my high school career, the pandemic hit and it brought a ton of uncertainty to higher education and to what that would look like, and so I started to reconsider going further away and thought it might be better to stay closer to home. So then I started looking a bit more at the local schools that Erie had, and when I visited Behrend I was just really in love with the culture that it had. I found people to be transparent about their experiences and supportive of new students and of current students, and I just found it to be a really good fit for me.
Ralph Ford:Did you have that feeling when you walked on campus? A lot of students do like they walk on campus and they know it's the place for them.
Sophia DiPlacido:Yeah, I don't know if it was that sudden, but I would say by the time I was leaving I did.
Ralph Ford:But you grew up in Erie. Had you ever been to campus here before that?
Sophia DiPlacido:Yeah, I did a lot on campus growing up. I attended college for kids as an elementary schooler. I went to the Pennsylvania Junior Academy of Science in middle school and then every year in high school Academy of Science. In middle school and then every year in high school I went to the McDowell and Mercyhurst Speech Innovate Competition which is hosted on campus. So I would say I had been around periodically throughout my life. Do?
Ralph Ford:you remember what you took in college for kids.
Sophia DiPlacido:I did an art camp and a theater camp.
Ralph Ford:Okay, no rocket camp, huh.
Sophia DiPlacido:No rocket camp, no rocket camp Art and theater camp.
Ralph Ford:So you already knew what you wanted to do back then with art and theater.
Sophia DiPlacido:Kind of.
Ralph Ford:Did you get involved in art and theater here on campus?
Sophia DiPlacido:I did lights for one of the shows my freshman year. I did not really take any art classes at Behrend, but when I was in France I took one and I really liked it.
Sophia DiPlacido:So what made Behrend the right fit for you when you came here and you looked around, I think that that community aspect was really important to me, but I also think that balancing that community with connections to a broader university network was something that really set Behrend apart, and I really liked that there were so many opportunities but that you also had the people and the support here to get you to those opportunities, and I think that that was really helpful for me throughout my time at Behrend.
Ralph Ford:Now, did you live on campus?
Sophia DiPlacido:I did. I lived on campus for my first three years. I became a residence assistant the second semester of my freshman year through the end of my junior year, and then I moved off campus for my last year.
Ralph Ford:So would you recommend to students that they live on campus when they come here?
Sophia DiPlacido:I do. I think it really helped, especially with being local, to integrate into the community, because it can be hard when you're leaving campus daily. Even my first year I worked worked off campus and even that was a little bit of a struggle and that removal from everything that's here, the physical distance, can make it hard to stay intact. I think if it's financially feasible, it's a great thing to be able to do. I would also recommend being a residence assistant or an RA to help offset the financials if that's a challenge for students.
Ralph Ford:Now it's a really great way to do it is to be an RA, but not every student can afford. So some students do commute and we do try to have a number of support services for them as well, and we can talk about that later as well. So I don't want to tell students who don't live on campus they shouldn't be here, but it certainly adds to the experience. Now you ended up studying two majors. What was the thought process behind?
Sophia DiPlacido:that I think I've always been drawn to a lot of different areas of learning and I think at the end of the day, I just really love learning. And in my high school I took an AP psych class and I really, really loved psychology. But it's such a competitive field I didn't know if I had the fortitude to really succeed in it, and so I was really scared at the prospect of majoring in it. And the ability to double major with psychology and something a bit more specialized like marketing was super appealing to me. I feel like I got a really strong empirical knowledge through my psych degree and a lot of industry knowledge through my marketing degree, so I think that it allowed me to be really well-rounded and that drew me to my double major.
Ralph Ford:Some people might say that it's a really dangerous combination. Right, Because the idea that you understand psychology and marketing makes you even more that dangerous in figuring out how to market to people. Did that go through your thought?
Sophia DiPlacido:It didn't when I was declaring my major, but it has been echoed to me as a deadly combination by many people throughout my four years at Behrend. I think marketing has a lot of ways to be impactful for people that are not simply consumerism and selling people things. I think that being explicit about a brand and what a company stands for is something that has an aspect of community in it, and so I do not have plans to become an evil marketer.
Ralph Ford:So you want to be an ethical marketer or are you going to focus more on the psychology side?
Sophia DiPlacido:I think if I had to choose tomorrow, I would probably pick the psychology side. I think my marketing degree has given me a lot of professional knowledge that will be helpful in psychology too. Psychologists, at the end of the day, are still employees, and the Black School of Business has really prepared me for the professional etiquette that comes with that. But I still think I might need some time to figure it out and go from there. But it's nice to have the options.
Ralph Ford:Well, you have a long time to figure it out. There's no rush and you can do multiple things, of course. Well, many of our psychology students you know they plan to work in a treatment setting or in a research field. Did that interest you? Did you get involved in that while you were here as a student?
Sophia DiPlacido:Yes, it did I. Actually, when I got to Behrend, I thought I would be a biology major because I wanted to work in a medical setting, and I think that the clinical element of that has always been something that's really fascinating to me. Both my parents worked in the medical field for a long time, and so I think that it was something that was sort of a part of my life. And then, as I got to Behrend and got involved in undergraduate research, I really started to love the systematic thinking that goes into it and using this research to answer everyday questions, and so I think, yeah, it's a huge draw for me.
Ralph Ford:So, Sophia, one of the things is you've been featured in something known as our Behrend blog and you shared one of your stories about the transition from high school to college, and you said that wasn't all that seamless. Could you tell us a bit about that?
Sophia DiPlacido:Yeah, I think when I first got to Behrend I had all of these expectations for what college would entail and I thought that I would immediately make a bunch of friends and immediately be really acquainted with my professors and just really mature into an adult overnight and these were not realistic expectations.
Sophia DiPlacido:But I think that some students have that sort of immediate expectation and navigating that was really challenging for me in balancing the distinction and the time that it would take to become acquainted with school.
Sophia DiPlacido:And I think one of the challenges with that is you're in this new environment so the support that you would usually have isn't as immediate as it would have been if you faced a challenge before coming to school. So I remember I sort of had a moment where I called my sister and I was just so lonely and I remember telling her like nobody wants to hang out with me, and she asked me have you asked anyone to hang out? And I was like well, no, and it was sort of just a reset for me that even with this transition there's still a sense of agency and students need to take the initiative to become a part of that community. And once you get there, all the resources are there, and so I sort of took that as a stepping point and started asking people to hang out. We did game nights in my dorm my freshman year, got involved in some clubs on campus and just really tried to approach Behrend with a little more of an open mind than I did with those first few weeks.
Ralph Ford:See, all it took was asking. But you got here during COVID, didn't you?
Sophia DiPlacido:I did so. Campus was still in a transition period when I got here.
Ralph Ford:What year may I ask?
Sophia DiPlacido:2021, fall of 2021.
Ralph Ford:So we were still wearing masks. Many students reported for a long time that finally, once they came off, they felt like they made a whole lot more friends, definitely. It was hard to make friends in that environment, but you did so. Once you leaned in, you got pretty busy very quickly. You were a Lion Ambassador, a Lion Scout, a Business Ambassador, Teaching Assistant. So what sort of experiences were you looking for?
Sophia DiPlacido:I think in my early years at Behrend I was really drawn to opportunities that would connect me with other students and sort of start to increase that personal network and meet new friends and new people. And so I think that in the first half of my experience a lot of my out-of-class involvement was focused around that. Once I went to France and came back I realized that I sort of had built that network and I felt really comfortable with the community on campus. So I started to shift my attention more towards professional experiences and research experiences that were a bit more individual but allowed me to become prepared for the professional world after Behrend.
Ralph Ford:And as you got more involved. I mean, when you do all those things, how do you manage your time? I mean, you're working here on campus. How do you manage it?
Sophia DiPlacido:I think a big component of my time management journey, I guess, would be self-awareness and being realistic about what you can achieve in a day or a semester and what you can't. I think that finding that balance can be really challenging at first, because so many of these experiences are new and you're not entirely sure what will be expected of you. So with that, it's really important to communicate, ask questions, set expectations about what you should be doing and then communicate if you can take on more, if you have to draw back, and I think that those two things are really important to balancing a busy student schedule.
Ralph Ford:What advice do you have for other students coming in? Do you use a planner or do you write things down? How did you go about it?
Sophia DiPlacido:I use my Outlook calendar pretty consistently, even like personal things. If I know that I have something going on, I'll put it in there. I also am a big fan of just good old-fashioned to-do lists, like when you wake up, these are the things that you're going to do before you go to bed again, and that just helps set some little goals for your day and, I think, keeps people on track.
Ralph Ford:Did you actually time block on your calendar?
Sophia DiPlacido:So put in there like I'm going to study from this time to that time. I tried, I did try that in the beginning. I sort of shifted more to like a rewards incentive where it was like I am going to study until this social commitment that I have and I know I'm not going to want to do it after, so I better be prepared by the time I leave. So I think that being strategic about where fun things fall in your day can make it a bit easier to encourage yourself to do.
Ralph Ford:That's a great way to think about it. I've got to get this work done. I should do that more often myself. I can go have some fun right.
Sophia DiPlacido:Yeah.
Ralph Ford:And it's really you know it works, it absolutely works. Well, you also. You know, as we said earlier, you were a resident assistant. You know how did that experience change you?
Sophia DiPlacido:I think the first thing that it did with the most immediate impact was it allowed me to meet a lot of students that I really probably otherwise would not have met. My first year as an RA I was placed in the engineering special living option. I'm a psychology and marketing major, so I wouldn't have had classes with those students marketing major so I wouldn't have had classes with those students. So I think that that really helped me see all of the students that Behrin has to offer and sort of connect with them in that way. I think in the larger scale, being an RA made me a lot more adaptable, particularly in uncertain environments. I think that there are a lot of things where you can train and you can be prepared, but when you're faced with a challenge there's something that has to click and you have to feel confident and ready to navigate that and I think being an RA really instilled that capability in me to adapt in the face of uncertain things.
Ralph Ford:Are there any things that happened when you were RA that you can talk about? That really challenged you, that maybe you didn't expect or was a really difficult situation?
Sophia DiPlacido:There were some that were really difficult, but there were some that were just fun.
Ralph Ford:You can talk about those too.
Sophia DiPlacido:I know, my first year some people dragged a big tree branch up into the bathroom on the third floor of Niagara and there's not an elevator in Niagara, so how people got it in there without being noticed is kind of insane to me. But it stretched across all three of the shower stalls and so when I got that call I had no idea what to do. But it was kind of funny too.
Ralph Ford:How did you resolve that prank? Did they end up coming in with chainsaws to cut it out, or something like this?
Sophia DiPlacido:I actually don't know, because the rule as an RA is, if you don't know, you call up, and so that escalated to the RLC and I didn't hear anything after that.
Ralph Ford:They came in. Did you ever catch who did it?
Sophia DiPlacido:I don't think so you don't have to name names. Yeah, I don't think so. So Although I will say, a few years later I was talking to one of my old residents and they mentioned that they knew who did it, and then they said the name and I didn't know them.
Ralph Ford:So Maybe it was someone from a different floor. Maybe, Well, also, you were in something known as the Shryers Honors College, and for those who know Penn State, that's a big deal. Shryers Honors College is difficult to get into. It requires that you complete an undergraduate thesis, so you have to do a lot of research. Tell us, you know what was the thesis work that you looked at. What problem did you look at? Let's hear about this. You know research that you did.
Sophia DiPlacido:So I grew up in Erie, love the Erie area and I would say for a long time I was sort of peripherally aware of the changes that are happening in downtown Erie and I wanted to learn more about those for my thesis, and so I started looking at what had been done before, what is currently going on, and I noticed that there might be an area that could be expanded on in the realm of food access in downtown Erie.
Sophia DiPlacido:So I started looking at the current literature that's available and noticed that there's sort of an empirical gap that aligns with that, which is that food insecurity is really heavily studied at the national level, but there's a desire to learn more about how local food systems impact food access, and then, additionally, there is an interest in exploring how changes to the food environment can impact food access.
Sophia DiPlacido:And so, between those factors, I decided to focus my undergraduate thesis on exploring food insecurity, which I guess I should say is a lack of physical, economic or social access to food, and specific into the 16501 zip code, which is located squarely in downtown Erie, and my results found that there really is some conflict between the national findings and the local findings. My findings were very preliminary, so I think more research would have to be done, but in the national literature the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program is found to be the most effective. In my study that was the least effective intervention for food insecurity. So I think that there are local mechanisms that would be important to study in the future and I really enjoyed learning about the intricacies of Erie's food system through my thesis.
Ralph Ford:So what did you find was the most impactful way to address food insecurity?
Sophia DiPlacido:People really gravitated towards community food services. So that would be like the soup kitchens that Erie has and it was a mixed method survey so people had the opportunity to share why they felt a specific intervention was helpful or not helpful. And it was really interesting People who were either really satisfied with local interventions or really not satisfied both mentioned, like the people that work at the place and the general environment as a factor in their consideration, and so sort of that emotional element or that human element is something that hasn't been addressed within the national literature but might be impacting the Erie food system.
Ralph Ford:So how did you collect the data?
Sophia DiPlacido:So I originally wanted to do semi-structured interviews but with the Human Research Board approval, it was just going to be too much of a time crunch. So I developed a semi-structured survey or, sorry, a mixed method survey that had Likert scale ratings for each of my research questions and then open-ended questions for people to expand on their answers. Open-ended questions for people to expand on their answers, and then I went to a homeless shelter, a soup kitchen and a food bank and distributed my survey in person. People were incentivized with a $10 Amazon gift card, so it was really nice that I didn't feel like I was asking for too much. And so, yeah, I think that face-to-face contact and being there and recruiting in person after I started doing that, I saw a huge increase in respondents. So I think that was-to-face contact and being there and recruiting in person after I started doing that, I saw a huge increase in respondents, so I think that was really helpful.
Ralph Ford:Wow, what was that experience like?
Sophia DiPlacido:It was really interesting. I remember in my thesis defense, someone asked if people were hesitant for me to be there, and I actually found it to be the exact opposite experience. People were really welcoming and also a few people were like, oh my gosh, you must feel so out of place here. Thank you for being here, and so I felt like there was a level of awareness that people had that was really helpful. People were eager to share their thoughts about this and were really incentivized by the gift card and felt that there was a shared benefit there, and so I found it to be a really worthwhile experience.
Ralph Ford:Well, that's really awesome and I will give you kudos, because that takes a lot of courage to go out and do that. And a really amazing story. So who was you? Talked about your thesis, but before we get there, who was your faculty advisor?
Sophia DiPlacido:Dr Melanie Hetzel-Riggin.
Ralph Ford:Okay, and she's interested in this as well.
Sophia DiPlacido:This is actually a bit outside of her area of expertise. With the way that Schreier is set up, your thesis advisor has to be someone within your major, but there wasn't anyone within psychology or marketing that was explicitly studying food systems. Dr Hetzel-Riggin was disgracious enough to allow me to pursue a project that was sort of outside of her expertise, but she has a lot of experience in community impact research. That was really helpful throughout the process.
Ralph Ford:Yeah, she's really engaged in our community. For those listening, Dr Melanie Hutzel-Riggin is the director of the School of Humanities and Social Sciences and also a professor of psychology, Anyway. So how does that working relationship go between you and your advisor?
Sophia DiPlacido:Yeah, I think that is something where it is a huge benefit to be a Schreyer Scholar at Behrend, because you almost definitely have a good working relationship with your thesis advisor before you start your thesis. And so Dr Hetzel-Riggin was actually my academic advisor my first year at Behrend and then, before I worked in development, I worked in humanities and social sciences, so I got to work with her a little bit there and then I did research with her for an independent study for a semester. So by the time I was getting ready to do my thesis, I knew how the working relationship would be. I knew how the working relationship would be. She was really helpful in navigating the literature and also in helping me navigate the changes that students don't expect in research. So when my response rate was low, she was helpful in helping me create a plan that was able to collect data. She helped me navigate the intricacies of ethical approval for doing human research. So I think that she was really supportive throughout the entire process and it was a really great relationship.
Ralph Ford:That is not surprising, knowing the two of you. How's that so glad it worked out? Well, one more question on that. You talked about your thesis defense. How did that work?
Sophia DiPlacido:So the thesis defense was essentially an opportunity to share my research with my thesis committee, which consisted of my advisor, which was Dr Hetzel-Riggin, my thesis reader, who was Dr Mike Rutter, who was actually in the School of Science and I'm very grateful that he was willing to be involved on this project, and then Dr Dawood, who was my honors advisor, and so the three of them came and sort of watched the defense. But then I was also really privileged to have a lot of cheerleaders who also came and just were hearing about my thesis throughout the last two years and decided to come and sort of see what I had been working on. So essentially I gave a 30-minute presentation on my research and there was another half hour allocated to questions and discussion.
Ralph Ford:And were you nervous going in?
Sophia DiPlacido:Yep.
Ralph Ford:Felt pretty good coming out though huh Yep. Good for you. That's always the way it works and that's the way it should be. And, for the record, we have in the room with us today Carol Nicotra, who works in the development office, and you looked at her and so I think she was there during your thesis.
Sophia DiPlacido:Yes, she was.
Ralph Ford:All right. Well, she's here during your interview as well, and that's great, and we're going to move to that next. That's why I say that you were an intern in the Office of Development and Alumni Relations for a number of years. What did you do there?
Sophia DiPlacido:I think one of my biggest responsibilities was managing our social media and ensuring that we were communicating properly with our alumni base via social media channels. But then I would also help with event logistics and planning and sort of offered a student perspective to events that had students who were attending, and then just the logistics of running an event, so registration and sending out emails or drafting emails. And then I think my final duty was, on occasion I would either meet with donors or communicate with alumni when they came to visit to campus, and that was really fun to just sort of provide that student perspective and see what had changed since they had last visited.
Ralph Ford:What did you learn most in being in development?
Sophia DiPlacido:I think when I came into development, I had an expectation for what it would look like. Similarly to when people hear about me being a psychology and marketing major, there's sort of this underlying like she's going to be an evil marketer. I think development gets a little bit of a bad rap, and so it was really nice to sort of see the philanthropic aspect of it and the passion that people have for Penn State and for sustaining Penn State, and so I think that that was a big takeaway was just learning more about the development industry and sort of unraveling some of the assumptions there.
Ralph Ford:Not only did you work in development, you were the beneficiary of development work in that you had multiple scholarships, and I mean the list is impressive. You were awarded the Lawrence and Elizabeth Held Scholarship, the John Mark and Geraldine Mills Lilly Scholarship, the Harriet Behrend Nino Memorial Scholarship and the Behrend Leadership Scholarship. So that's a lot. How important was that funding?
Sophia DiPlacido:It was absolutely imperative to me coming to Behrend and also succeeding at Behrend. I knew, with my family's financial situation, that pursuing higher education would be a challenge, and so scholarships were really helpful in making that an attainable goal for me. What I didn't anticipate was, once I got here, how much more mental space I would have to be able to focus on my studies and enjoy all that Behrend had to offer, because I wasn't worrying about the financial aspects of college. So I think that, in addition to being a huge physical factor in getting me to Behrend, my scholarships were also really impactful in creating the mental space for me to succeed at Behrend.
Ralph Ford:Well it's, you know it's really important and obviously funding helps. Did you? Did you feel like you had to work harder because you got those?
Sophia DiPlacido:Yeah, I would say in some ways, especially at times when I didn't want to work, I think when that motivation is low, it was really helpful to bring it back up and say like there are people who have invested firsthand into your success and the best way to repay them for that and to thank them for that is to do what is expected of you.
Ralph Ford:Show them you're successful. Well, not only that, you earned a really big award, something known as the Benjamin A Gilman International Scholarship for Study Abroad, and I know about this one. It is an award that is a prestigious national scholarship that has supported students in more than 170 countries, and we've had a few students get in here just a handful, not a lot. You ended up choosing to study in France, so what was the process to get that? What was it like living in France?
Sophia DiPlacido:So I first heard about the Gilman from Ruth Pfluger over in the Learning Resource Center when I was first approaching this idea of studying abroad and I know Ruth has helped plenty of students with fellowships and scholarship applications and so she sort of thought that I might be a good fit for it and encouraged me to write a few drafts for it and I thought that that would sort of be the end of the support that I got with the application. But when I sent Ruth my first drafts she asked me to come back and probably over the course of a few weeks spent close to 20, maybe more hours walking me through the edits that she was making and helping me just get a really strong application together, and so I was able to really focus my writing a lot in a way that I think helped me not only get the Gilman but with future fellowship applications and with future academic writing. So I really attribute a lot of my Gilman to Ruth and her guidance. And then with figuring out the country to apply my Gilman to, it was really more of a process of elimination. Apply my Gilman II it was really more of a process of elimination.
Sophia DiPlacido:So I took two semesters of Spanish back in my freshman and sophomore years of high school. So I didn't really have a language proficiency I would say coming into Penn State and getting ready to study abroad. So on Penn State Global there are plenty of different program options, but once you filter by the ones that don't have a language requirement you're left with about 12. So that was really helpful for me to sort of hone down where I wanted to be and then from there I knew that I really didn't have the desire to live in a capital city. I figured if I was going somewhere I'd rather it be a place that I might not visit. So then I looked at the ones that were left and Aix-en-Provence just really spoke to me because it looked like a beautiful town, it was close by to the Marseille Airport, which was really helpful to me eventually because I knew I might want to do some traveling once I got there and the school was established, and so I just felt like it was a really good fit.
Ralph Ford:What was it like studying in the school there in the university?
Sophia DiPlacido:It was different than here for sure. For starters, I didn't have class on Fridays, which was pretty nice. Their approach to academics is a bit more hands-off than I was used to. For example, the professors don't have office hours, so that was a bit challenging. If you had a question, you really had to try to find a way to ask that during or immediately after class. The other thing that was interesting was I did not really get to see my grades throughout the semester, and, as a pretty high achieving student, that was really stressful, because it's hard to gauge your success and gauge your growth if you're not sure where you stand, and so that was something that was a little bit intimidating to me.
Ralph Ford:Well, I taught in Europe for a while. In some courses the professors only give like a midterm or a final, and sometimes only a final. Is that what you saw?
Sophia DiPlacido:Yes, I think most of my classes did a midterm and a final, but one just did a final.
Ralph Ford:Yeah, that is an awful lot of pressure, but you passed your classes, I'm assuming.
Sophia DiPlacido:I did.
Ralph Ford:With flying colors.
Sophia DiPlacido:For the most part.
Ralph Ford:For the most part, we're going to take that as all A's and B's.
Sophia DiPlacido:Yes.
Ralph Ford:You don't have to tell the audience that you also lived with a host family there.
Sophia DiPlacido:What was that experience like? It was a really, really amazing experience. I was really nervous before I left about what that would look like and to do it was a huge push. But it was something that when Ruth and I were talking about what my study abroad would look like, she had said that any student who had gone and lived with a host family and sort of took that risk really just loved it. And so I was sort of supported by that and decided to live with a host family and I think I kind of got the best of both worlds, because it was myself and then three other American students who were studying at the same university, and then my host parents, and then they had a daughter who was a year below me, so she was probably 18 at the time and so it was really nice because there was someone my age to connect with and that was nice.
Sophia DiPlacido:And then I think when I got there, I wouldn't say it was awkward, I would just say everyone was adjusting to each other and it's your first time meeting and all of a sudden you're sleeping in these people's house. But then, once you got over that and with time throughout the four months. They really became such a core part of my experience. They taught me a lot about French culture, and they asked questions about American culture that you couldn't ask someone if you had just met them. So I like to think that my host family was really a great way to cultivate like a meaningful immersion in France, and so I really enjoyed that experience.
Ralph Ford:I assume you keep in touch with them.
Sophia DiPlacido:Sometimes, yeah, it's hard with the time difference. And then, immediately after we left, my host mom. She's a teacher and she went to teach in Cairo for two years, so very exciting to see what she's up to.
Ralph Ford:Well, what did you learn about yourself through the experience?
Sophia DiPlacido:I think the big takeaway was just sometimes you're more equipped for risk and uncertainty than you think you are. When I left, I was so nervous about being away from home for the first time being in a country where I really did not speak the language, living with these new people, adapting to this social change, especially because that was something that I struggled with a lot when I got to Behrend. But I did it and I think it was, all in all, a very good experience, and even when it wasn't fun, it was a growth process, and so I think that having that experience really matured me and allowed me to sort of recognize that there's a confidence that comes from dealing with uncertainties, and so that was a big takeaway for me.
Ralph Ford:That's where you learn the most when you were put outside of your comfort zone. Did the experience change your view of America, or how do you look at the US? When I came back after a long period, it was just amazing to see the US in different eyes.
Sophia DiPlacido:It really is, and I think prior to going abroad, my only context for the world was through an American lens, and so my perception of America sort of changed once I was able to account for what is universal versus what is American specific, and so sort of having that understanding and experiencing it firsthand was really helpful for me. One of the big things that I noticed and that I had learned about in my classes was this idea of like an individualist culture versus a more collectivist culture, and America is very individualist in its approach, and so sort of seeing how a family unit in France functioned and the way that French people cultivate their communities is a little bit different, and so it was just interesting to sort of broaden my understanding of things that I had learned about.
Ralph Ford:Well, we're getting close to the end. A few more questions as you leave Behrend, as you graduate, what advice would you have for students coming here?
Sophia DiPlacido:I think the biggest thing is be patient, be brave and be grateful. I think those okay. So that's three things, but I would say all three are important.
Ralph Ford:You can say as many as you like.
Sophia DiPlacido:Perfect. So I think, like I mentioned, my transition was not seamless and it took more time than I was anticipating, and I think that's true for a lot of students and to get the benefits of being a part of this community, there's a level of consistency and patience that's required. So I would say, just keep that in mind when you're here. Who you are at the first day of freshman year is not who you're gonna be by the time you graduate senior year. So just keeping that in mind is helpful. Being brave is really important. You're gonna be in sort of uncomfortable situations in some capacity throughout your four years here, and it's okay to do things even when you're scared, and that that can be really helpful and provide a lot of new opportunities. And then the third is just to be grateful. It's really. Higher education is such a privilege and keeping that in mind can be something that can help propel you through those harder times too.
Ralph Ford:That's great advice. As you leave, what's next for you?
Sophia DiPlacido:So I am currently a semifinalist for a, a Fulbright English teaching assistantship in the Czech Republic. So if everyone wants to keep their fingers crossed for that, I would really appreciate it. I am continuing my internship with development through the summer, so I have a few more months to figure out a more long-term move. So plan A is the Fulbright. Plan B would be applying for jobs and hoping that I can find something and then hopefully applying to grad schools next year. I just think I need a little bit more time to digest my education at Behrend and really think about what area I'd like to pursue next.
Ralph Ford:Well, we know all of those plans will work out well for you, but we are really pushing for Plan A, where you get the Fulbright and you go to the Czech Republic. You'd have a wonderful experience.
Sophia DiPlacido:Thank you.
Ralph Ford:Well, you have been listening to Behrend Talks. I am Dr Ralph Ford, and my guest today is a new graduate of our college's marketing and psychology program. It's a pleasure having you here.
Sophia DiPlacido:Thank you, chancellor Ford, thank you.