{"id":30311,"date":"2024-02-21T09:25:29","date_gmt":"2024-02-21T14:25:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/?p=30311"},"modified":"2024-02-22T08:55:43","modified_gmt":"2024-02-22T13:55:43","slug":"for-pratik-shrestha-26-a-chance-to-study-and-learn-all-over-the-world","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/for-pratik-shrestha-26-a-chance-to-study-and-learn-all-over-the-world\/","title":{"rendered":"For Pratik Shrestha \u201926, a chance to study and learn all over the world"},"content":{"rendered":"

Pratik Shrestha \u201926 isn\u2019t one for staying put.<\/p>\n

When COVID-19 restricted travel in his native Nepal, Shrestha pulled strings to tag along on ambulance rides and get a taste of what was happening outside his immediate neighborhood.<\/p>\n

When it was time for college, he came to the United States. Before his first year was over, he\u2019d made plans for a summer program in Bali. He started his sophomore year in Scotland for a semester-long internship.<\/p>\n

He\u2019s back on campus now, but when classes end, he\u2019ll head back to Nepal for a 10-day trip to the Mount Everest base camp.<\/p>\n

After that, who knows?<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u201cI love connections in the world,\u201d said Shrestha, who\u2019s studying information technology and data analytics at Furman, and is a Bell Tower Scholarship recipient.<\/p>\n

Working with data helps him predict how those connections will develop and shift over time. And travel helps him understand the connections better and reflect on them more thoughtfully.<\/p>\n

Shrestha is the first in his family to leave Nepal for college. He said his parents were emotional but supportive of his decision.<\/p>\n

\"Man

Pratik Shrestha ’26 visits Dunnottar Castle, located in Stonehaven, Scotland.<\/p><\/div>\n

Shrestha\u2019s dad is a retired accountant for the Nepalese government; his mom is a homemaker who invests in the stock market. Their income is low, he said, but from the earliest days of their marriage they committed to setting aside a set percentage for investment.<\/p>\n

Stock market analysis is \u201cour normal dining conversation,\u201d Shrestha said.<\/p>\n

He graduated high school in 2020 \u2013 not the right time to try to travel across the world for the next stage of his education. So, he rode ambulances. And he did an accounting internship, which he hated.<\/p>\n

He was more than ready for the world when the world was ready for him.<\/p>\n

Opportunities and support<\/strong><\/p>\n

He\u2019ll never forget his first look at Furman in Fall 2022: \u201cJust seeing the lake, I was already sold.\u201d<\/p>\n

To his knowledge, the last time a Nepalese student came to Furman was in 2015-16. Shrestha said his interactions with faculty have helped him think about himself and his vocation more clearly.<\/p>\n

\"Man

Pratik Shrestha ’26 at the Lempuyang Temple in Bali, Indonesia<\/p><\/div>\n

\u201cThey have great opportunities, and not only the opportunities, but the support,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

And that support includes help to study and learn all over the world, a central element of The Furman Advantage<\/a>, the university’s four-year educational pathway shaped by engaged learning \u2013 including study away, research and internships \u2013 faculty mentoring and reflection.<\/p>\n

The National Survey of Student Engagement (NSSE) found that 45% of Furman seniors had completed a study away experience or had one in progress. That number was only 8% for the NSSE group, students at nearly 1,700 bachelor\u2019s-granting colleges and universities in the United States and Canada. For Carnegie institutions, those with a similar emphasis on teaching undergraduates, it was 24%, and for Southeast private colleges, it was 12%.<\/p>\n

Shrestha had wanted to visit Bali since he was young \u2013 he was interested especially in its Hindu temples. While Indonesia is predominantly Muslim, the province of Bali is Hindu-majority. Shrestha\u2019s parents are Hindu, but \u201cI don\u2019t know about me,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

During his two months on the island, he worked for a marketing company in a position that leveraged his data skills and taught him the foundations of marketing as well.<\/p>\n

\u201cOne thing I really learned was understanding how Indonesia works as a country,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

His cousins\u2019 experiences in the United Kingdom prompted him to pursue another internship there. Shrestha spent the 2023 fall semester as an intern with Young Co. Finance. He managed, cleaned and analyzed real-time data on deals that were happening throughout Scotland.<\/p>\n

He loved his months in Edinburgh, but he missed his professors and his classmates. He missed the Dining Hall.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m like a big ambassador for Fuman,\u201d he said. \u201cI can\u2019t stop talking about it.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Pratik Shrestha \u201926 isn\u2019t one for staying put. Shrestha is the first in his family to leave Nepal for college. He said his parents were emotional but supportive of his decision.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":272,"featured_media":30327,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[101,58,47],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-30311","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-data-analytics","category-internships","category-study-away-and-international-education"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30311","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/272"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=30311"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30311\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/30327"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=30311"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=30311"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=30311"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}