(This is cross-posted at BlogHer.)
In the fall of 2004, when I was a senior in college, I spent a semester studying abroad in Amsterdam. As cliché as it may sound, the experience really did change my life. Since it’s impossible to completely prepare yourself in advance, you have to be adaptable – you’ll be faced with situations over and over that are different from anything you’ve seen or had to do before.
I think going abroad is a great life experience for anyone who’s able to do it; whether it comes about through school, work, or an extended backpacking trip. If you’ve never been abroad (as I hadn’t before that trip), taking advantage of the opportunity while you’re in college is a great way to go. Why? Because for many people, life circumstances are bound to get in the way later.
After you graduate, there are so many important choices to make: Where do I live? What kind of job do I want? And as I later discovered, after I’d finished college and was contemplating the possibility of finding a job overseas, it’s a lot harder to initiate something like that when you’re just starting out in the job world. Unless you want to work as a volunteer, or find a job once you get there, it’s really hard to obtain a work permit if you’re not in a high-demand field.
After spending five months in a foreign country, I can say firsthand that it’s an entirely different experience to stay in an unfamiliar place for a long period of time, as opposed to spending just a few days. (And I’m sure any long-term expats reading this are thinking, “Five months! Try five YEARS.”) As nice as it is to spend a few days in a foreign city, it’s inevitable that you’ll feel rushed as you go from one thing you have to see to another, or you’ll have to leave something out because you just don’t have the time.
In addition to meeting Dutch people, I became acquainted with students from all around the world – French, German, Australian, Italian, Brazilian. And it wasn’t just that I had classes with them…I lived with them. We were in a dorm-style building, with one kitchen and two bathrooms per hall. (The communal living itself was something I had to get used to; even though I was a senior in college at the time, I’d always lived off-campus.) So the fact that I was suddenly living not only with a lot of other people, but people from a wide variety of different countries, was quite different for me.
However, no matter how different it was – and at times how challenging it could be, as well as frustrating – I wouldn’t trade it for anything. After all, if I hadn’t gone to Amsterdam, I would never been able to defend myself against being called a typical American. I would never have spent all those hours wandering through the city’s streets and crossing the canals. I wouldn’t have felt the ferociousness of the wind in that flat, flat country (sometimes I literally had to stop and brace myself so I wouldn’t be blown over). I wouldn’t have attended an early-December Sinterklaas celebration, or traveled to Geneva, Brussels, London, and Paris.
In the Netherlands, I rode on the narrow back seat of a bicycle for the first time – more accurately described as a “ledge” than a “seat” – sitting with both legs on the same side. (The best way to mount: have the driver push off and being pedaling; run after them and then attempt to sit down – hopefully you land on the seat without causing them to have an accident.) It was a harrowing experience, and I always felt like I was on the verge of toppling off the bike (and yes, after consuming alcohol and riding home late one night, my friend and I did indeed flip the bike and we both took a tumble). We got back on afterwards and continued on our way, but I never did enjoy that particular biking experience and I can’t say I’m sad about not getting to repeat it on a regular basis.
Jackie calls her time abroad her “best detour yet.”
This [summer trip to Valencia, Spain] influenced me so much that I plan to return to Spain after graduation to further develop my Spanish skills with determination of bilingualism. I plan to utilize both of my majors (Public Relations and Spanish) in my career in the future. I am unsure of what that will exactly entail at this point, however I know I want to use my Spanish skills in my everyday aspirations. Some might say that traveling after college is somewhat cliché and a way to merely “put real life off.” […] I am completely convinced and confident that my time spent abroad will not hinder me in my eventual career goals but rather serve as an excellent detour on my road of life.
Erin, a student at American University in DC, is currently spending a year abroad studying Arabic.
Life in Jordan has proved to be quite fun. […] In talking with cab drivers here, many ask me why I’m studying Arabic. They are legitimately curious as to why a 20 year old American girl would come to Jordan, and what makes me interested in learning about Arabic. I’ve detailed that here at some point or another, but fully living within the culture has provided me with more incentive and more motivation to get this language and this region involved in my life as much as possible. […]
Arabic homework becomes a family event, and Kamaya will sit with me and help me with words that I don’t know or forms that I don’t recognize. It’s very funny to have a parent’s help with homework again – I haven’t been in that environment since early high school. I also am pretty sure that Kamaya is friends with Jumana, my spoken Arabic professor, so she’ll be getting updates on how I’m doing in class. Oh life.
Spice of Life spent a semester in Munich, and had this to say when she returned home.
What was I looking for in this experience? Still not quite sure on that one. To get better at German for sure, but the language does not play any specific role in my future plans, as fluid as they are now. To see Europe and its great cities, too, but no plans were made before my departure at the end of August, everything arranged across the ocean. Certainly not to advance on my path to a Journalism major. Did not even take a media studies class over there. Mostly, I think, I was looking to get shook up. I was comfortable at [home], and it was time to see what happened when I threw myself into a situation I was not quite prepared for (God knows two years of college German is not enough to get by), break myself off from the familiar and watch the consequences. […]
For as much as I despise Harris’ The End of Faith, he does make one decent metaphor. We are all living with an incurable disease that will knock us dead and off this mortal coil, and we do not know when. That is life. I just faced that on a smaller scale in Europe but was graced with the knowledge of when it would all end. Now I want to live my life that way. To go out and do something worth remembering and not pass up an opportunity for something new. Quit using homework as an excuse not to spend time with friends and stop spending hours asking “So, what do you want to do?” instead of doing something.
For that alone, I am euphoric I spent that time across the ocean. Really, it is not any sort of great revelation. Good grief, Tim McGraw sang “Live Like You Were Dying.” To actually experience it, though, is something else.
Amanda is preparing to study abroad at the University of Sydney in Australia, and she discovered that something she usually takes for granted – internet access – might end up costing her quite a bit more than she’s used to.
What really hit me big time today was: HOW MUCH YOU PAY FOR YOUR INTERNET!!! Here in the US there are tons of wireless hot spots, the University of Hartford campus provides unlimited free internet, even the city of Hartford offers free wireless internet! Not so much in Australia. At U of Sydney they track the amount of Mb you are downloading from the web and you only get 42Mb free per week. After that you have to pay for your internet usage. Unfortunately there are no free internet hot spots over there.
One big down side to that is that I was planning on using skype as my main form of communication. Skype = free internet calling. Sounds good right? Wellll it might not end up being that great when I start paying for internet by the Mb. […] When I decided to study abroad I knew contact to my friends and family would be limited, but now it’s looking like I will mainly be using email to communicate.
Have you studied, traveled, or worked abroad? What was your experience like?
10 Comments
Study abroad was THE defining experience of my life. I went through the Long Island University Global College. I did a nine-month comparative religion and culture program that took me to Taiwan, India, Thailand, Nepal, and Turkey. I spent all of the next year in China.
I seriously would not be the person I am today without those experiences. I’m from a very small, very WASPy, very non-diverse town in the mountains. My eyes were opened in more ways than I could describe in a year of blog posts.
My program was through a private school and I’ll probably be paying for it for the next 15 years, but I would recommend it for anyone, no matter what the cost.
I did a five-week winter session over in London, and it was great. I was not quite as immersed as I would have been during a full semester, but I had such a blast reading British fiction, seeing plays, and spending a weekend in Scotland. It’s so prohibitively expensive to travel overseas now, so I’m really glad that I did it. I wish I had had a better camera then!
When i was 29 i decided I had to finally get to europe before i turned 30. I went 2 weeks by myself, and I was scared to death. but i had a blast and it was a great confidence booster becuase I did it all by myself.
Hey! Amanda and I went to the same college.
In the US, I mean.
3 months in Germany when I was 16/17. One day on a public street, I was talking to some of my German friends (in my horrible German). An eldery lady standing nearby recognized my American accent, came over to me, hugged me, and started crying without a word. Shocked and confused, I just stood there for a minute while she hugged me. She then explained that during WWII, she was a child in Eastern Germany. She continued explaining that if it were not for the Americans air dropping food into Eastern Germany, her and her family would never have survived. Since then, she thanks every American she meets.
That was almost 13 years ago. I often look back at that encounter and wonder what happened to her. I wish I would have taken more time then to talk to her. But I was a young teenager at the time that simply didn’t understand the gravity of what she was trying to tell me.
Now, I have experienced a war zone first hand. I’ve seen how it affects citizens caught in the middle. Her comments rang in my head the entire 6 months I was in Afghanistan.
It might sound cliche, but it is soooo true. I studied my senior year in college for a summer in Spain, and it was a really life-altering experience. I had visited abroad, but nothing compares with living life there as a *true* local (like those fabulous Amsterdam bikes). Knowing the language and approaching the locals from that angle makes for a totally different experience.
I think the experience showed me all that there is to love about a bigger city. All it can stand to offer. I think something like this allows you to learn to rely on yourself in a different way and for me coming from a smallish city, to either decide to embrace the big city or to cling to the idea to return back to what you’ve known for so long.
I didn’t study abroad, but I did work for an AIDS organization in Uganda for a year after college. Although I’d already done quite a bit of traveling through Europe and Central America in my adolescence and university years, living in Uganda was a transformative experience in many many way. And it definitely focused my career aspirations towards international public health. It also eased me into three months spent working in Sierra Leone a few years later.
And now I’m looking forward to moving to Germany in the summer for a year-long research fellowship — which I’m sure will be a wholly different and challenging experience too!
I had spend approximately zero time abroad before my junior year of college, which I spent in Bologna, Italy. Since then, I have spent more years in Europe than in the US. Going on eight years of European life, and I’m wondering whether I’ll ever move back to the US again…
I work in international organization in Russia which deals with enrollment students to the medical and engineering Universities of Russia and Ukraine. I saw a lot of foreign students who came there and passed their courses with getting Degree. And I can write that life in foreign country really changes people. I saw it many times. Students begin to understand themselves better as they face with new traditions, with new culture, new emotions and experience. They look into new soul of new country and find out their personal soul in it, find themselves. Students compare their native country and country where they study. They can find good and worth sides and use it in personal experience as patience to demerits of other people, respect to foreigners, test of feelings to native friends and relatives, capability to overcome difficult situations and many other points… All of it is useful. All of it is real life full of expressions and new experience.
I just got back from a semester abroad studying Arabic language at a school in Damascus Syria that I highly recommend. tolearnarabic.com. The prices were much more reasonable than the schools I looked at in Jordan IMHO, and the quality was excellent.
Regardless, I totally agree. A semester abroad is great! Get out of the house (and away from the parents) for a while. :&)