Skip to Content, Navigation, or Footer.
Logo of The Mercer Cluster
Thursday, Mar 28, 2024
Interested in Working for the Cluster? Ask about joining our Discord!

Moody Musings: What Inspires You? With Sterling Conyers

Conyers visited Hermanus, Western Cape, South Africa while participating in the Cape Town Internship Program at Mercer.
Conyers visited Hermanus, Western Cape, South Africa while participating in the Cape Town Internship Program at Mercer.

Sterling Conyers is a senior International Affairs and Spanish double major with minors in Asian Studies and Global Health.

Conyers was originally born in Stone Mountain, Ga., but she moved to Fayetteville, Ga. at the age of five. Like many Mercer students, she chose to become a bear because of the scholarship Mercer offered her.

Fortunately, she came to Mercer and received much more than your average college education is supposed to give you.

Conyers has done a lot of traveling during her college years. She’s been to South Africa, London, China, Dubai, Morocco and Spain, but she’s not done just yet.

Sterling-1_ONLINE-317x475
Photo provided by Sterling Conyers
Sterling Conyers visited Chefchaouen, Morocco while spending a semester abroad at Al Akhawayn University.


“We’re not so different, but we also are,” Conyers said. “Traveling is a great opportunity to see how other people live and realize how both similar and different they are from your own life.”

She said when you experience other cultures, you become much more tolerant and understanding.

“Nothing will surprise you, and you will learn that there’s no right way to do things,” she said.

Her favorite destination is a tie between South Africa and China.

“They’re both naturally beautiful,” she said.

After graduation, Conyers will be serving as a Fulbright Scholar in Taiwan for 11 months as an English Teaching Assistant. Her grant purpose is PhotoVoice, where she’ll be instructing her students to use photos to communicate and learn English.

Conyers has been considering applying to Fulbright since her sophomore year at Mercer, but her plans on the kind of Fulbright program she wanted to pursue changed.

“I was going to do Argentina because I wanted to do Spanish,” she said.

Conyers has studied four languages, but Spanish was the language she was closest to fluency in.

“The Argentina [program] didn’t start until January 2019, and that seven-month gap between graduation and this is not attractive,” Conyers said.”

She then moved on to the possibility of participating in the Fulbright Spain program, but with the help of her committee, she eventually chose Taiwan.

“I heard Chinese is best learned from the source,” she said.

Travelling inspires Conyers because it provides her with the opportunity to be a positive representation of American diversity during her stay.

Sterling-3_ONLINE-900x600
Photo provided by Sterling Conyers
Sterling Conyers visited the Great Wall of China while participating in The Nanjing University Intensive Language Immersion Program.


She’s traveled to many places where they weren’t used to seeing people who looked and lived the way she did, and in Taiwan, she can’t wait to communicate how multifaceted America is.

Conyers came to Mercer looking to receive a degree in Spanish. One of her favorite professors, Eimad Houry (International and Global Studies Department Chair), convinced her that International Relations would be suitable for her.

“It’s so interdisciplinary that you learn a lot even without meaning to,” she said. “It’s got history, social sciences, sociology, anthropology and political science.”

After she completes her Fulbright, Conyers plans to pursue graduate school. She’s hoping to participate in a Masters of Human Rights and Humanitarian program in Paris, but this is just one of her three choices.

Regardless of where she lands, Conyers wants to continue to grow as a global citizen and leaving a little bit of herself and her home everywhere she stops.


Comments

Powered by SNworks Solutions by The State News
All Content © 2024 The Mercer Cluster, Mercer University