It’s rare that we can come away from a year of our lives with no regrets. However, for me, when I look back on my time studying abroad, there isn’t much I would change. This satisfaction I feel is only possible because I approached those two experiences with a healthy amount of realistic intention.
Of course, I wanted to improve my language skills and gain a deeper understanding of the cultures I was living in. But I also wanted to learn more about myself, particularly what I value and what I actually want from life. I wanted to become more flexible, independent, curious, and resilient. This is an unusual opportunity to experiment with every part of how you live.
The key, I think, is not to move through the experience passively. You must be willing to challenge yourself, pay attention to what it is teaching you, and be open to letting it change you. Doing that requires some deliberate action. It may not come naturally for you.
If you are preparing to study abroad soon and those same goals align with what you want from the experience, these are the guiding principles I would keep in mind.
Engineer discomfort
Let me tell you about a metaphor that I adore and that has stuck with me for many years. In the early 90s, at the Biosphere 2 research facility, trees were planted in an ideal, artificial environment without wind. Over time, researchers noticed something strange happening: without natural wind, these trees became weak and began to break. This is because in that environment, they did not need to develop “stress wood”; when a tree is pressured by wind during its growth, it responds to the stress by growing stronger, more resilient wood. So, the tree doesn’t grow strong despite challenging weather conditions, but rather it grows strong because of the challenging conditions. This functions as a fantastic metaphor for our personal growth, doesn’t it?
When we are thrown into a new environment, our instinct is often to take the path of least resistance and cling to sources of comfort. Unfortunately, those comforts are often the very things standing between us and our own development. If it is your goal to grow as a person in every way while studying abroad, you must engineer an environment that is stripped of some non-essential sources of comfort. For example, if your goal is to become fluent in the host country’s language, consider a homestay with a family that speaks little English instead of a solo dorm room. If you want to grow socially and meet people from different walks of life, go abroad alone instead of going with a friend.
Ask yourself if you are creating conditions that are a little too perfect, or if you are in an environment that encourages you to get stronger. Obviously, don’t approach this time with the intention of making it a personal hell, but consider which few challenges might be worthwhile for you. You can always add more challenges as you get settled rather than making everything hard on yourself from day one.
Date your city
When people ask me what a typical day was like for me during my year studying in Tokyo, one of the first things I mention is how much free time I spent exploring the city on my own. It might sound mundane, but some of my favorite memories in Tokyo were on the days when I would get out of class, put in my earbuds, and explore a neighborhood that I had never been to before with no particular goal in mind. Or take public transportation mainly because I felt like people-watching while listening to a podcast. On numerous occasions, instead of going to my neighborhood drugstore for a product I wanted, I would go to a different shop 30 minutes away just for the adventure. Just because I could.
Falling in love with a city can kind of be like falling in love with a person. Maybe you don’t fall in love with someone during the most exciting, planned, high-energy moments, but rather, you fall in love with them in the ordinary, spontaneous, intimate moments. This was how I fell in love with Tokyo– by getting to know her in all her forms, not just how she appears on the surface.
Try to do this with whatever city you end up taking on. Do it solo. Get some one-on-one time with your new home.
Observe how you feel about the city
Let’s stretch the metaphor further in continuing to view the city as a romantic partner. Oftentimes, a romantic relationship is for a season, and its purpose is to teach you about yourself and what you want from life. Use the time you have in the city with that intention. You could spend a semester living in Buenos Aires and never live there again, but perhaps it would help you realize that you adore a city with vibrant neighborhood markets, great walkability, and plenty of green spaces. On the other hand, perhaps it would make you realize you just can’t tolerate a place with a lot of noise pollution or somewhere you can’t always feel safe to walk alone at night. This is great information to know about yourself. Learn what you want and what you want to avoid in the future when it comes to selecting a place to live.
Practice saying ‘yes’
I don’t know about you, but for me, when it comes to meeting new people, I can be very shy. I’m very afraid of awkwardness. So, when I am invited to do things with people that I don’t know very well, I make up excuses to convince myself to pass on the opportunity. If you have this same inclination, I strongly encourage you to intentionally fight against it during your time abroad.
Before you say no, ask yourself why you actually want to decline. Is there a real reason like money, safety, genuine exhaustion, or an important obligation? Or are you just nervous, comfortable at home, and dreading the effort it takes to get out of your comfort zone? If it’s more of the latter, that is usually when I think you should push yourself to go.
This is a useful principle anywhere, whether you’re in Chico or Paris, but it matters especially when you’re abroad because the experience is so, so temporary. I feel that you owe it to yourself to experience as much as you possibly can.
Whenever my friends and I were debating whether or not to pass up on a fun opportunity on a school night, we would usually justify going by saying “You’re only twenty-something studying abroad in Tokyo once!” Saying no could mean you miss out on the best story of the whole semester. Maybe not, but do you want to risk it?
Adopt new habits and preferences
Nowadays, we can feel like our identities should be expressed through a beautifully packaged list of things we consume, especially for Gen-Z women on the internet. Rather than knowing what “aesthetic” you fit into, I think it is much more interesting to become a collage of everything that resonates with you in your diversified experiences, even when those pieces come from entirely different places. Studying abroad is a great opportunity to figure out what you really like in an entirely new cultural context, outside of an algorithm or social structures back home.
For example, experiencing other cultures has changed the way that I enjoy meals with others. Dinner with my Chinese-American friends has taught me that I love family-style eating: getting a wide array of dishes and sharing amongst each other rather than having everyone get their own entree. Living in Portugal has taught me that I much prefer eating dinner around 8 or 9 PM rather than at 5 or 6 PM. The way I care for my body has been impacted by the places I’ve travelled, like how I discovered my favorite eye drops in Japan but my favorite skin oil in Morocco. One of my favorite songs this past summer was a Turkish song my Uber driver put on AUX, and my go-to drink order was a Caipirinha– a drink from Brazil that a Brazilian guy introduced me to.
I think all of these organic ways of developing personal taste are much cooler than figuring out what you like from an algorithmically curated TikTok For You page.
I like that my tastes now contain little traces of the places I’ve been and the people I’ve met. I think it makes me a more enriched human being. This will happen to you too if you open your heart to it. Become a mosaic of your life experiences and the people you meet along the way.
This isn’t a guide for how to have the perfect study abroad experience. Study abroad becomes especially valuable when you treat it as an opportunity to deliberately experiment with who you are, how you live, and the life you ultimately want. If you walk away understanding those things a little better, the experience will stay with you long after you come home. You are not going abroad just to experience a new place. For a little while, you’ll get to experience a whole new way of being yourself.