If you’re in my life, you’ve likely heard about A. I hate A. Well, hate is a strong word. I deeply dislike A, to the extent that I’m still having imaginary arguments with her in my head despite the fact that it’s been two months since I last saw her. 

While I am an easily frustrated person, it takes a lot for me to be totally unable to stand someone. When I first met A, I expected for us to be friends. We were both working at a rural development NGO in Nepal this summer, and we initially bonded over a shared love of hard classes and fuckass campus jobs. 

However, it very quickly became clear to me that A had no knowledge of Nepal before deciding to live there for two months. She had no idea what the Nepalese Civil War (1996-2006) was, and asked me what the om symbol on the wall of my family’s house was. Normally, I would not fault a person for not knowing these things, but I found it genuinely bizarre that she had done no research about the history, politics, or religious life of Nepal before going there. 

At first, I let it slide. I’m quite used to ignorance about the place where half of my family lives. A postdoc at Brown once questioned my desire to research anticolonialism in Nepal, saying, “I thought every Nepali loved the British.” If Dr. Redacted could be that ignorant about my home, I was willing to cut A some slack.

Regardless, A was working on a thesis about Indigenous languages, so she asked if she could tag along on one of my field visits for my thesis to interview people for her project. I gave her a hesitant yes, and off we went to a rural municipality in northern Nepal. 

While there, A asked a question so ill-informed and therefore offensive that it upset her interviewee, who bluntly said: “Why would you ask me that?” She repeatedly demonstrated complete ignorance of the very subject she claimed to be researching, which could have been remedied by skimming a Wikipedia article or a brief Google search. Despite the fact that I had sent her multiple readings on Indigeneity and language in Nepal, it was clear she didn’t think that she needed to learn anything before engaging with Nepali people. 

The point of this piece is not to call attention to how ignorant A was or how her poorly designed research questions ruined several Nepali people’s days. Nor do I seek to laugh at a particularly interculturally incompetent individual (though it was funny when she saw me receiving tikka and said, “I didn’t know people did that in real life”). 

Rather, I think A is a good cautionary tale to all students who want to go abroad at some point for whatever purpose. After one of her shitty interviews, she turned to me and said, “Wow, it’s actually crazy that U.S. understandings of settler colonialism don’t work in Nepal.” No shit, A. I think that this points to a larger dynamic: ignorance is often framed as something to be celebrated. We say, “Wow, I never knew that before,” as if we’re announcing that we won an Olympic gold when maybe—just maybe—we probably should have known that before. 

So, to any student going abroad for a semester or a summer: Your ignorance of that place is not an asset. Do some light research before you board the plane, try to learn the language at least a little bit, and be gracious as you navigate your inevitable blind spots. Doing so is an important way to demonstrate humility and respect for a people and a place. 

So travel far, travel wide, but remember that the places that are new for you have histories and political contexts that you’d do well to know a little bit about. The world is your oyster, but it’s not a blank canvas.