George Griswold
"I chose my program because I thought it would give me a lot of flexibility to find and develop my interests."
Meet George Griswold, a fourth-year student at the College of Arts and Social Sciences, ANU. He is currently pursuing a Bachelor of Arts and Bachelor of Languages, majoring in Philosophy and Chinese Language, and minoring in German and Linguistics. Additionally, he is also completing a Diploma of Languages in Advanced Chinese.
A lover of languages, George chose his flexible double degree “because I thought it would give me a lot of flexibility to find and develop my interests.” Interests that have taken him all the way to Peking University in Beijing on an undergraduate exchange.
“This exchange is supported by the New Colombo Plan, an initiative of the Australian government to encourage Australian students to develop experiences and connections abroad during their undergrad.” George is one of 150 Australian recipients, the largest cohort of scholars to travel to the Indo-Pacific in a single year under the initiative.
With 40 possible host-locations across the Indo-Pacific, he said “I chose China because it matches my Chinese language major and I have recently been interested in Chinese-English linguistics.”
“I'm having a great time here in Beijing. As far as capital cities go, it is about as far from Canberra as possible, with a constant bustle of high-density high-activity life (and population close to eclipsing Australia as a whole).”
“I have been able to meet people from all over China and all around the world. This semester, I spend my free time learning Guzheng (a Chinese classical instrument), ink painting and playing badminton.” Despite being 9,000km away, he still keeps in touch with home, making sure to check in with the cricket scores once a week.
“When I finish my exchange I will have one more year before I graduate. After that I am considering an honours program in applied linguistics and I would like to stay involved in the Australia-China space.”
