During my spring break, I got the chance to be part of a virtual travel program that toured New York City, Paris, and Milan. Originally, Agnes planned for us to physically travel to one of these fashion capitals, but the pandemic completely took away that opportunity. To make up for our profound loss, the school came up with a virtual program featuring interviews, Q&A sessions, and lectures from guest speakers in those countries. I appreciate the fact that Agnes put in effort into this Journeys trip, but I can’t help but feel disappointed and unfilled experience-wise.
Throughout the week, I spent it mostly attending zoom meetings with a panel of experts who have experience with working in fashion or exploring the history behind the interdependent relationship of a fashion capital. I got to speak with some pretty great people, but it seems as though that this journey felt more like a class rather than an actual traveling experience. Something was definitely missing.
Don’t get me wrong, the trips were fulfilling from an academic standpoint, but I can’t help but to think about all of the lost opportunities of cultivated memories that could have been built from actually traveling with my classmates. More importantly, the traveling abroad experience is what makes the Journeys program so effective. Honestly, I would have preferred for our trip to be postponed, so that way there would be a glimmer of hope of actually traveling abroad. Now I can’t fault Agnes too much, because they obviously could not predict this pandemic, but at the same time, the activities that were scheduled for each trip could have been more interactive and fun, rather than feeling like attending another lecture.
In my lifetime, I have not gotten the chance to travel much, and this pandemic really did inhibit the most important traveling trips that I was looking forward to in my college career. I know that this Journeys trip is not the end-all or be-all of studying abroad. But the bleak future and direction of this pandemic have made me realize how little time left is in my college career to travel. Instead of dwelling on this, I should really try to positively reappraise this situation but at the same time, the harsh reality of our current situation certainly inhibits that. I hope that Agnes can improve on their virtual Journeys trip, because throughout my time traveling virtually for a week, all I could think of is how things could have been if we’re able to travel physically.