Learning to Lead in the In-Between

Logan Tayler Pender 
Studying abroad in South Korea in 2022 at age 22

The first time I left the United States to study abroad at Korea University in Fall 2022, I stepped off the plane in Seoul with a suitcase that felt heavier than it should’ve. Some of it was nerves, some of it was excitement, but a lot of it was me carrying the weight of being a first-gen, low-income, multi-racial kid from South Carolina’s foster system who never thought I’d end up halfway across the world. I thought I was ready. But the truth? No guidebook or YouTube video prepares you for how travel really changes you.

At first, I was a tourist in every sense. I compared everything to home—the food, the silence, even how people carried themselves. I was looking at Korea through American glasses, keeping one foot safely in what I knew. That’s what tourists do: they pass through. But a traveler? A traveler leans into the awkwardness, the not-knowing, the vulnerability. Slowly, that’s what I became.

It didn’t happen in some big, cinematic moment. It happened in the quiet ones—like eating kongbiji jjigae  (콩비지 찌개) and mandu (만두) at 2 a.m. with my friend near our dorm, stumbling through honorifics in Korean, or realizing I could feel at home even in places that felt unfamiliar. Those small cracks of liminality—being both here and not-here, familiar and foreign, taught me travel isn’t about performance. It’s about presence. About stillness long enough for a place to reshape you.

Then came grief in the form of the Itaewon tragedy. We lost two peers in our program, and suddenly the city shifted. Joy gave way to grief, and I had to learn how to mourn in a culture not my own. That week, I didn’t just learn about Korea, I learned about humanity. Even though my Korean was limited, I realized silence itself can be a bridge. Leadership, I saw, isn’t about always having answers. Sometimes it’s about showing up in the stillness, sitting with grief, and being present when words fall short. That lesson will stay with me longer than anything I studied in a classroom.

Leonardo da Vinci once wrote: “There are three classes of people: those who see, those who see when they are shown, and those who do not see.” Korea was where I learned to see. As a Gilman Scholar and Fund for Education Abroad Scholar, I found myself at tables with American and Korean diplomats—something I never imagined for a kid like me. But those moments reminded me: international education isn’t just about personal growth. It’s diplomacy. Every laugh, every question, every shared meal is a tiny act of bridge-building. I learned something else: when you’re abroad, you’re not just you—you’re also an American. Sometimes that meant explaining U.S. democracy. Other times it meant laughing at my thick Southern-belle accent. And sometimes it meant facing hard questions. But it taught me that we carry responsibility: to listen, to represent with honesty, and to stay curious.

To my peers—especially those who’ve ever thought education abroad isn’t “for people like us”: I want to tell you this—step into the unknown. Let yourself feel the awkwardness, the nerves, even the doubt. That’s where the real learning begins. Ask the hard questions, challenge what you’ve always been told, and do it with gentleness and care. And when you stumble—and you will—see it not as failure but as proof you’re growing. Be willing to be shaped by the world. Be willing to be changed. International education isn’t just about travel, it’s about transformation. It builds the resilience, humility, and perspective we’ll need to lead in an interconnected, yet fractured world. In an era of polarization, tension, misinformation, and division, this kind of learning isn’t optional—it’s urgent.

When we step into the world not as tourists but as travelers, we learn to rest when everything tells us to hustle. We learn that stillness teaches as much as motion. We learn to find belonging in unexpected places. And when more of us have those chances, it doesn’t just change us, it strengthens our country’s global engagement, our universities, and our generation’s capacity to lead with care.

So, my hope for our generation is this: embrace the liminal spaces. Find those moments when your eyes turn skyward. Trust that even in the unknown, you’ll find what you need. Because when you do, you don’t just come home with stories, you come home as a traveler, as a leader, and maybe, if you’re lucky, with a new sense of home itself. After all, as Leonardo da Vinci reminds us: “Once you have tasted flight, you will forever walk the earth with your eyes turned skyward, for there you have been, and there you will long to return.”