While the small town in Michigan where she grew up is the place that she goes back to whenever she "needs a safe haven," Alaina Miller doesn't think of it as "Home" anymore. Not since she set off for school in Chicago- and especially not since she spent the last year studying abroad as part of the Ricci Scholars program at Loyola College. What's driven her constant shifts to bigger, newer locales has been the vast diversity and different ways of thinking that she's encountered at every step of her journey. She went off to college knowing that she wanted to travel internationally and saw the Ricci Scholars' program's destinations of Rome and Beijing as a natural evolution, with each stop being a jumping off point to something ever-more foreign. Her project to study migrant housing has opened her eyes to a world of possibilities, and it's been incredibly fulfilling, but she realizes that she's starting to move outside of the experience of her traditional group of friends, and that she may find herself facing the same challenge that many who have spent time overseas face- discovering that they need to connect with different kinds of people than they did before they left.
Learn more about the Ricci Scholars program at Loyola University here: https://www.luc.edu/ricci/index.shtml Get in touch with comments, suggestions or interview recommendations: