Step 1: Realize all the options the Study Abroad Office gives you.
Step 2: Realize that you don’t know where half those countries are and that your parents will only let you go somewhere in Europe… so Europe it is.
Step 3: Trying to understand the difference between all of the 6 million forms that the Study Abroad Office makes you fill out while you reassure them that you totally know exactly what they’re talking about.
*quietly panics*
Step 4: Run around campus trying to find four different advisors to sign a sheet of paper before the deadline the next day.
Even though none of them know what they’re signing. Classic.
Step 5: Finally hand in your paper work and application… but are still forced to wait more than a month to see if you got accepted to your program.
Don’t worry because you’ll reassure everyone else that there’s no way you’ll get denied even though you know its totally plausible that that C- in Chem freshman year can be the deciding factor of getting in or not.
Step 6: You’re accepted! You’re going abroad! Nothing can go wrong from here!
Step 7: No more evil Lehigh professors who give an insane amount of homework in an unachievable time period!
Step 8: Time to go to countries where beer is cheaper than water and alcohol is legal before you’re 21!
Step 9: Then realize that you will miss St. Fratty’s Day at Lehigh and tell yourself it’s not a big deal.
Step 10: Realize that you’ll miss all of BBQ season at the end of the school year and still try and tell yourself its not a big deal.
Step 11: Realize that you won’t see your best friend or boyfriend or family members until at least Spring Break.
Step 12: Force yourself to get on the plane and do what you said you would do even if you’re crying your eyeballs out from some severe FOMO.
Step 13: Make tons of friends and memories abroad. Have the trip of a lifetime. And have all the aspects of Lehigh waiting back here for you when you return. Realize that you would never trade your semester abroad or Lehigh for the world.