A semester abroad has become a stereotypical must-do to tick off an ultimate student experience bucket list. I find this concept problematic. It may be the best four or five months of your life, but in a period of time that long you are bound to feel angry, sad or lonely at times, and spend some evenings scrolling through Facebook or procrastinating on an essay. I’m not suggesting that a semester abroad isn’t worth it – far from it. I’m suggesting that the way we see the studying abroad experience is wrong. It isn’t a dream destination itself, but a journey of ups and downs.
Studying abroad follows a similar narrative to a good questing story. You’ll start off brave, exploring the forest (your new campus and city). You’ll encounter some mythical creatures (people from other countries) who join you on your quest (become your friends). You’ll encounter some monsters, physical barriers or an evil villain (homesickness, culture shock and loneliness) that you’ll see off in the end, but will have to fight off in a dramatic way. And at the end of it all, you’ll go home (back to the UK), learning a vital life lesson (cultural awareness, independence, friendship etc). Actually, that’s the plot of The Wizard of Oz, The Hobbit and Shrek. Was I going off on a tangent, or is that somehow relevant to this article? It is relevant – like a good fictional quest, a semester abroad allows you to learn a lot about yourself and the world through surviving obstacles.
You may not realise the extent of this until you’re back in Kansas, Bag End or the Swamp. The reason why study abroad gets put on an almost unreachable pedestal is that when you’re back home the experience finally makes sense as a whole, and you realise just how fantastic it is. Whilst you’re there, it can feel like every moment is an opportunity to do something life-changing, which is both empowering and stressful. It’s hard enough learning how to live in a completely different environment with strangers. I spent a semester abroad in the USA at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, and though I had an amazing time, I don’t think I realised the extent of this until I got home and I realised all of the challenges I had overcome.
Instead of looking through rose-tinted glasses at my time abroad, I’m going to have a look through the typical reasons people give to study abroad and give you my honest response.
Exploring another culture
Going on a weekend holiday somewhere is not the same as living amongst locals for an extended period of time, which is what a semester abroad provides. The thing that no one tells you is that while much of this is exciting – for me, going to college basketball games and eating genuine Southern fried chicken – a lot of what you’ll notice will be mundane. One of my biggest achievements was figuring out the standard paper size in America, so I could change my laptop settings to print out my essays (or papers, as they call them) correctly. Yes, really – that’s part of what the daily life of adapting to another culture means. But if you love your study abroad home, you’ll learn to get fascinated by all the differences, and start talking to your friends back home about them. Don’t worry though, I did line dance, eat pizza at a Superbowl party and go to country music concerts. You’ll do the wonderful stereotypes of your home away from home. Just bear in mind that what makes it home instead of a holiday is the stuff in between.
Travel
As much as you can travel without taking a semester abroad, doing so gives you the inclination to get on with it. Also, it’s a lot easier to travel within a country than to keep coming back from the UK.
Do bear in mind that travel isn’t something that miraculously occurs just because you’re on a semester abroad. Travelling every weekend is tiring and expensive (that’s at least twelve weekends), and your friends won’t always have the same plans as you. During Spring Break, my American friends were going home to their families, whilst my International friends wanted to visit New York and Washington DC – cities I’d been fortunate to visit in the past, but I wanted to try somewhere new. You may have to decide to compromise on your plans or go it alone. I visited Savannah and Charleston and got to see the St Patrick’s Day Parade in Savannah and fell in love with the houses in Charleston. Travelling alone was definitely a back-up plan, but it gave me greater confidence in my abilities, and I can’t say I didn’t do what I wanted.
Also, if you study abroad in the US, bear in mind that it is bigger than Europe – a quick Google maps search will tell you that London to Moscow is a shorter drive than Knoxville to Los Angeles. If you want to visit New York, Miami and LA, you’ll need to do some serious road-tripping, or book expensive flights. And don’t forget, you’re young, you’ll probably travel again, so sometimes it may be worth spending some of those weekends exploring your campus and study abroad city in depth so you feel like you know it by the time you leave. Ultimately, if you make the effort to travel but know you won’t hit all the spots, you’ll appreciate the amazing opportunities you’ve had.
The people
During my semester abroad I made friends, both American and from other countries, from Nashville to the Philippines. But this didn’t occur miraculously. I’ve never been one of those people who make friends that easily – this doesn’t change on a semester abroad – but it does help that being English will make you inherently fascinating to a lot of people. You may have found it took you a semester to make good friends in Nottingham, and this could also happen on a semester abroad. I really started to become close with my flatmates not long before I was about to leave. Nevertheless, in the age of social media, keeping in contact is easier than ever, and they’ll already be saving up for a trip to visit you before you’ve even returned home.
However, I titled this section ‘The people’ rather than ‘Friends’, because studying abroad is as much about meeting a variety of people from different backgrounds as it is about the firm friendships you make. You’ll hear incredible anecdotes of experiences unlike your own. For example, I had a professor who spoke about her parents’ experiences living as African Americans in segregated Virginia. Studying abroad provides the opportunity to hear stories and perspectives you’re unlikely to hear back in England, so soak up everything.
Broadens your perspective on studying
One of the major things I’ve got from my semester abroad that I didn’t expect is a broader perspective of what it means to study and learn. Do remember that studying abroad means studying abroad, even though that’s far from all you’ll do. This can be intimidating – as an English student, it’d been a while since I’d done a weekly quiz – but it’s also a great way of realising that how schools and universities work in England are actually fairly arbitrary. Once you learn that in other countries you can put your hand up to ask a question in a lecture and part of your grade comes from class discussion, you’ll never want that to go away. It’ll help you evaluate what you really want to get out of your studies, and you may even get to study some books and topics you never would at Nottingham.
Employability
A semester abroad is a lucrative thing to put on a CV. I’m not a fan of doing something solely to please an employer, but you do gain life skills from studying abroad, which is what employers recognise. You gain independence from travelling to another country on your own and adapting to a new environment, potentially in another language. You learn to communicate with people from another country, as well as other international students, gaining global awareness and empathy for other perspectives. Even if you’re still on an English-speaking course, Americans, Australians and Canadians all have their own cultural variations in slang, body language and formality. Somewhere along the line you will struggle, and you will need to take on the challenge to overcome it. Perhaps this will be facing your fear of heights and skydiving. It may be something less photographable, but equally as beneficial, such as gaining confidence to talk to strangers when you’re lost in a new city. Don’t underestimate the so-called soft skills you’ve gained. As great as memories are, these will be your greatest take-away from a semester abroad.
A semester abroad is ultimately a journey of ups and downs. But should you go? Definitely. Approach with a sense of a reality, and it’ll be the thing of dreams.
Edited by Jayde Richards
Picture Sources
http://www.isvmag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/02/International-Student-Voice-Study-Abroad-Pins.jpg