Personal Growth
Knowing another language and spending time living in another culture can open (unexpected) doors for you, and change your life profoundly.
Speaking another language and living in another culture challenges who you are, and makes you examine your very identity. It involves you in a process of change that can only happen through a sustained and non-superficial encounter with the unfamiliar. This is what growth is all about.
Speaking another language can open doors for you, physically, mentally, even spiritually. It can lead you to places you never dreamed you would ever be.
Studying foreign languages and cultures will contribute to the development of your analytical, critical, and interpretive abilities. (Some studies have even shown a direct correlation between foreign language study and improved performance in verbal and mathematical skills.)
Spend at least a semester in a country where a language other than English is spoken. You will come back a different person, and you will definitely be more interesting to your monolingual, mono-cultural peers.
