Going abroad is a sick time. It’s indisputably a ton of fun, regardless of whether you end up preferring it to a semester at Wake or not. That being said, guys and girls approach abroad very differently, and there are certain types of girls who can absolutely ruin our time abroad. So if you think any of these might be you, and you want to continue to hang out with guys while abroad… just do less of what you normally do.
- The Micromanager
You. Are. Annoying. I’ll start with this one because my dislike for this type of person has no end. This type of girl thinks that she is the champion of trip organizing and makes it her mission to prove it to everyone. On any of the numerous weekend trips you take while abroad, she will absolutely destroy any ounce of fun you might have once thought possible. She will essentially outline in chalk the path that you are allowed to walk on, and passive-aggressively recommend that you return to said path every time your feet wander.
For whatever reason, this girl firmly believes that she knows exactly what you subconsciously want to do, but you yourself haven’t realized it yet. What’s worse, she’s disillusioned into thinking that she’s as “chill” as the Bay Area. She’ll always introduce her tyrannical commands in the form of suggestions and recommendations, and she’ll crush any resistance by badgering you until you’re left following her around like a beaten puppy. This girl will literally make her guy friends want to claw out their eyes, and she will without a doubt be ditched (my buddies and I actually sprinted away from one of these monsters at one point). Look, all we want to do is see the famous sights, drink their local beer, and most importantly… do whatever we want.
- The Cultural Know-It-All
Every guy thinks the exact same thing when this girl speaks: “I won’t hit a girl… I won’t hit a girl.” This girl goes abroad just so she can be everyone’s cultural guide that absolutely no one wants. Maybe it’s because she knows nothing about America, and is trying to finally be the expert at something. Maybe she just wants to make me hate everything about the new country I’m in. Either way, she will not let a moment pass without telling the group something she knows about the country. She will explain the subway to you, she will translate every word of every menu, and she will drop little bits of knowledge that she claims she learned from all the locals she’s been talking to (Lonely Planet, Fodor’s etc…).
Personally, I picture this girl arriving to the country and instantly visiting every single museum in a day or two, because she will literally list every single painting in any museum she hears mentioned. She’ll ruin any tourism you attempt to do by telling you where to go to and where not to go to, and she’ll present her opinions as generally accepted facts. About a week into the semester, every guy will avoid this girl like the plague, because hearing “the Mona Lisa’s actually really small,” or “everyone takes a siesta in Spain” one more time will make them pack their bags and go home. In a nutshell, this girl is a perfect storm of Hermione and Karen Smith- yes, we know it’s raining, stop raising your hand and telling everyone.
- The One Drink Wonder
This girl represents everything that foreigners hate about Americans. She’ll take one or two shots, and everyone in the bar will immediately think that Skrillex’s new single is playing throughout the entire bar, only to realize that it’s actually an American girl screaming about how much she misses sushi and how all of the locals smell weird. This girl has always been the key to turning a great night into a horrible one; but now guys also have to deal with the horrible embarrassment of being associated with her in a foreign country. She’ll be loud in quiet restaurants, she’ll have no sense of her surroundings, and she’ll say things like, “Oh my god! Are you American?” to every guy she thinks she hears speaking English.
This girl is completely different than our obnoxiously American guy friend, because although we can tolerate the occasional “USA!” chant he insists on starting, we cannot bear to hear her catalogue all seven drinks she claims to have had. Instead, we’ll most likely stick around until she starts puking all over the place, watch the good part, and then bail before her girlfriends blow the whole situation way out of proportion.
[pagebreak]
- The Guy’s Girl
This girl is not inherently bad, but instead rides a fine line between awesome and miserable. This is the girl who every group of guys loves in moderation. She is the girl who you can talk about blowjobs with, who chugs like a champion, and who loves hearing which of her friends you think are gross. And although this girl can be just as awesome abroad, she has a much higher chance of being disillusioned into thinking that she is actually one of the guys. This girl could very easily hang out with only guys in the first few weeks abroad and completely pass up the chance to meet any girls. Then, what started out as an exciting novelty will quickly turn into the nightmare of always having a girl around.
She’ll expect to be included in everything, and you’ll be left with a girl who’s completely dependent on you as her only friends. This leads to some absolutely horrifying experiences, like her thinking it’s okay to talk about pooping, periods, guys she wants to hook up with, or any other off-limits topic. Guys are extremely perceptive of when this situation is becoming all too real, and will instantly start avoiding girls who seem like they’re latching on. No one wants to picture girls pooping.
- The Crime Magnet
It’s hard to truly dislike this girl, because she’s so oblivious that you have to feel bad for her. This girl is to a thief what a wounded doe is to a wolf; what a dying mouse is a giant boa constrictor. When she leaves her apartment, she makes sure to bring the largest, most unwieldy bag she can find with her, filled to the brim with all of her valuables. For her, a trip to the local bakery somehow requires her passport, her credit cards, that irreplaceable trinket her grandmother left her, her camera (which for some reason still has those pictures from summer camp in 8th grade that she’ll never get back), and her iPhone (the loss of which will be the end of the world).
On top of that, she decides it is necessary to take her backpack, which she makes sure contains her laptop, her address (which she has yet to memorize 2 months in), and the sheet detailing how to get around the city. If that weren’t enough, this girl is somehow holding onto her bag with the least amount of force possible, essentially leaving it outside the bakery as she goes inside. If, inevitably, she gets lost in a sketchy area, she will wait until she’s alone in an alley with that crackhead wearing the torn Messi jersey to ask for directions in English. And then, somehow, she’ll get robbed by that guy she fell in love with in a club. The bottom line is, as much as we feel bad for you, we got over you getting robbed during the semester the second we met you.
BONUS
- The Instragramer/Blogger
This one may cause some controversy, because it encompasses pretty much every girl who goes abroad. Either way, this girl needs to be told one very simple piece of information: Your abroad experience is not unique. In fact, there’s a 99.99% chance that her experience, and everyone else’s who goes abroad, is actually extremely average. Regardless of that fact, the advent of social media and the Internet has engrained in her mind that the world is interested in her day-to-day life abroad. She’ll Instagram pictures of literally everything and anything: a wine glass, a church steeple, every single sunset that occurs during the semester etc… And although I’m fully aware that this is what many girls do on Instagram whether they’re abroad or not, there’s something about doing it in a foreign country that makes it absolutely intolerable, as if the glasses of wine are somehow amazingly different and they need to make sure all of their friends are aware.
Next, as if the photo montage of her life wasn’t enough, she needs to write what she did that day and post it online. The terrible jokes, the occasional use of a foreign language, the “scary” time she got lost on the subway and went one stop too far (see subway use above), the use of the phrase “culture shock…”
Finally, as if those two weren’t enough, this girl will post hundreds of pictures to Facebook that contain not one single person in them. There will be entire albums of trees, buildings, signs etc… Now, I get that people want to remember their experience, but what is the point of posting it to Facebook? Isn’t it enough that you yourself remember it? No one wants to see a picture of the Eiffel Tower on Facebook – we have Google Image Search for that.