The Muhlenberg volleyball team has a short-term goal that’s not too surprising: win the Centennial Conference championship. The Mules enter tonight’s home match with Haverford in a virtual three-way tie for first place with the season’s finish line rapidly approaching.
One of the team’s seniors, Nikki Dickson, has a more unusual and ambitious long-term goal: She wants to visit at least 5% of each continent in her lifetime.
She’s off to a good start. In Dickson and Julia Elkin, the Muhlenberg volleyball team has a pair of well-traveled senior co-captains for whom the country and the world has been their classroom.
“Every place is different,” said Dickson. “You gain such a well-rounded perspective when you see other cultures.”
“For as long as I can remember, I loved going to new places and experiencing different things,” said Elkin. “Although I am frequently busy, I get restless with my everyday routine, and traveling to new places seems to be a good antidote.”
Dickson was born in Arkansas and moved to Texas at a very young age. She stayed there through 11th grade, when her family moved to western Pennsylvania. She spent her senior year at South Fayette High School, long enough to be recruited to play at Muhlenberg. The summer before she began classes, her family was on the move again, this time to Winston-Salem, North Carolina.
Elkin was born in Vienna, Austria, when her father, then a professor at Purdue University, was on sabbatical. At the end of the school year, her family moved back to West Lafayette, Indiana, only to return to Vienna a few years later for another sabbatical. In 1999, when Elkin was 6, her father took a job at Penn State University, so the family moved to State College.
Pisa
This past spring, Dickson and Elkin studied abroad together in Florence, Italy. While spending the semester there, they traveled all over Italy, taking in the Amalfi Coast, Pisa, Naples, Milan, Cinque Terre, Rome and Pompeii, among other places. They also traveled outside the country, to Munich, Amsterdam and Vienna – Elkin’s “home away from home,” where she reunited with family friends.
“The experience was truly life changing!” said Elkin. “And, although I genuinely missed my parents, teammates and friends, being at home this summer was a little bittersweet. Almost every day abroad was unfamiliar and exciting. There was always something new to try and experience.”
Both players had obstacles to overcome before they could study abroad, not the least of which was being on the volleyball team.
“I knew I wanted to study abroad when I got to college,” said Dickson. “I wanted to study in Maastricht, but you can’t as a fall athlete.” (The semester in Maastricht, the Netherlands, is offered only in the fall and is popular with spring athletes, most notably men’s lacrosse players.)
“So I had to compromise a little, but I wasn’t going to give up studying abroad. It was a lot of work, but it makes you set your priorities and work harder.”
Amalfi Coast
“I knew even in middle school that I wanted to travel abroad during college,” noted Elkin. “However, once I decided to play collegiate volleyball, I wasn’t sure if a semester abroad was possible. I thought I would have to sacrifice one option for another, but thank goodness that was not necessary.
“We have a great Office of Global Education at Muhlenberg. With their help and the incredible support from my parents, I was able to achieve a long-term life goal.”
And although being abroad this past spring meant being away from their teammates during offseason workouts, it hasn’t shown on the court, where Dickson and Elkin are two of the reasons why the Mules are 20-2 and in the midst of a school-record 13-match winning streak.
So where did Dickson get her 5% idea from? That came from meeting someone while abroad who had an app called “been,” which tracks countries visited and places them on a map.
“I realized that even with all of the places I’ve traveled, I haven’t seen much of the world at all,” she said. “That made me want to travel much more.”
Dickson and Elkin are two of many Muhlenberg students who have been inspired to further travels by their study abroad experience. More than half of last year’s graduates studied abroad, according to the Muhlenberg Global Education website, which begins with the following statement: “In a world that is becoming increasingly interdependent, study abroad represents a significant means by which students may better prepare themselves to face challenges of the future.”
“It’s really cool how Muhlenberg encourages their students, and especially athletes, to study abroad,” said Dickson. “It’s such a benefit to you as a member of society.”