Reasons to be abroad…

It is now well into February, and the halfway point of my time in San Francisco has come and long gone. As of this week, it is six months exactly since I landed at SFO, and in those six months I have grown to love this quirky, smaller-than-you-imagine, big-hearted city. I experienced my very first earthquake. I – someone who has never before willingly watched any sporting event that wasn’t the Olympics or the Rugby 6 Nations -adopted the San Francisco Giants as MY team, I learnt the rules of the game and I watched the final games of the World Series with my hat on my head and my heart on a crazy roller-coaster. “Let’s do sunset” has become a phrase I use regularly in conversation and text messages, and I have my own collection of favourite spots in the city to watch it. I have met incredible people from all over the world and developed profound friendships with them.
I feel like I have woven myself into the patchwork fabric of this city, and it’s a really beautiful feeling.
The opposite side of the coin is that the time spent here is time I have missed at home. For the first time in my life, I wasn’t with my Mum, Dad and sisters for Christmas. Some of my best friends in the world have been incredibly brave and impressive and created a theatre company, and on the night of their debut all I could do was send flowers and best wishes instead of performing with them as I would have had I been there. My cousin is having a baby. Sometimes it feels like I’ve been away from home for an awfully long time.
Sometimes, only for half a second, a question crosses my mind and I ask ‘is the experience worth it?’. Then, almost as fast as it appears, the question is chased away by a resounding ‘YES!’. There are hundreds of reasons why studying abroad is one of the best things I have ever done. Right now students of my host campus, San Francisco State University, are applying for their own Study Abroad adventure and this semester’s intake of exchange students are approaching the end of their first month. Just in case any of them are on the fence over whether the decision to move to another country for a few months is the best idea they have or will ever make, I have made a list of reasons why it is.
1. You will meet incredible people.
When you are an exchange student, you become part of a community of exchange students. These are the people who will understand your experience, because they’ll be sharing it with you. The students that surround you will be a wild tapestry of languages, cultures, backgrounds, interests, personalities and ambitions. You may be surrounded by people who are different from you in every way, but for a few months you are brought together by geography. Their differing experience of life will make your experience abroad rich and rewarding. Also, there is a certain amount of bravery and personality that is required to move to a whole other country and culture, to live and work and study in a place that is unfamiliar to you and in which you may not know anybody. For this reason, I very rarely meet a boring person living abroad. In many ways, you meet the best that every country has to offer.

2014-10-29 20.51.57
2. You will have a network of couches to sleep on in almost any part of the world you might find yourself in.
I have been lucky enough to meet so many interesting, funny, intelligent people and I even made friends with some of them. Many of them have, or will, go home to Germany, Norway, Australia, The Netherlands, France and all sorts of other exotic places. So now, if I ever find myself in Germany, Norway, Australia, The Netherlands, France, or practically anywhere in the world really, I have someone to visit and stay with. Just as any one of them will always be welcome to stay with me in London. For someone with increasing wanderlust and a permanently limited budget like me, this is very exciting news.
3. Being brave is good for the soul.
Doing things that scare you is one of the quickest paths to growth. It makes you realise that you’re capable of more than you ever believed. And if you can do this, if you can get on a plane and land in a strange city and learn to navigate it and make friends and survive the challenges that will come your way, you can do anything. It’s exciting! Enjoy the fact that it’s little bit mad and a little bit scary, relish the adrenaline and make yourself proud. Life’s more fun when you’re fearless.
4. You might actually learn something!
Depending on how committed you are to your studies this may or may not be exciting for you, but studying in a different university could give you a whole new insight into your subject. You will be learning from new lecturers who probably have very different areas of expertise than your teachers at home. Your host university will also offer classes that you wouldn’t have had the option to study at home. It is hard sometimes to bring yourself to care about studying when you’re exploring a new city, and travelling, and socializing wildly. Let’s not forget though that education is a privilege and an adventure in itself. I am enjoying my subject more now than I ever have. If you let it, your academic journey could be as exciting as your personal one.

5. At no point in your life will you be handed another opportunity like this one

I have moved abroad for a job and I have moved abroad to study. Both are hugely rewarding and exciting, and both have their own unique challenges. Without a doubt, though, coming abroad and having an established community ready and waiting for me is infinitely easier. An educational exchange is a massive adventure, but with a team of people looking out for you both at home and at your destination to guide you through visa applications and other administrative issues, it’s a really safe environment to go adventuring in. Sure, there will be nobody stopping you from moving abroad for a year in five, ten, fifteen years’ time, but the whole prospect will seem a lot more daunting when you’re doing it alone.

6. You’ll stand out
In the UK, only 5% of university students study abroad, and I’m fairly sure the numbers are pretty much the same the world over. When applying for those scary things called jobs that we’re all going to have to think about after graduation, you will have something on your resume that is a bit different from your peers. ‘I’ve studied abroad’ also means ‘I’m really brave’, ‘my comfort zone doesn’t limit me’ and ‘I’ve probably got some really good stories to tell.’
7. Home isn’t going anywhere
I loved living in London. I have great friends there, I love going to the theatre, it has a bar specialising completely in gin, I had some great work experience opportunities and I very nearly decided that I didn’t want to live anywhere else in the world. As my wonderfully wise friend told me though, all those things will be there when I get back. Since that conversation I have lived in Barcelona and in San Francisco, and I’ve learned that it’s possible to love more than one place. By feeling at home in San Francisco, I’m not ‘cheating on’ London, or even the beautiful little Welsh town I grew up in. And each place I’ve lived in has revealed different sides to my personality that I didn’t know existed, facets of myself that I probably never would have discovered if I’d stayed where I was.
8. In a year’s time, you’ll have forgotten all the arguments against going.
I skyped a friend from my home university last week, and after catching up about my adventures abroad and her experience of the ‘second year blues’, she told me she can’t remember why she decided against studying abroad. At the time, she must have had a compelling reason, but can no longer justify the decision and wishes she’d made a different one. Another friend cancelled her study abroad application after she was discouraged from leaving by friends she no longer talks to. At the time, choosing to go seemed to me like such a major decision, but now I can’t imagine myself saying anything but ‘of course I want to go!’
Your bank account will forgive you eventually. It might be expensive (or not, depending how your particular country’s funding system works), but then so is an education in general. If you can consider your education an investment in your future then studying abroad has to be considered an equally important investment. With Skype and whatsapp and Facebook and Twitter it will be so easy to keep in touch that you can go whole days at a time without remembering how far from home you are.
9. It’s so much fun
I have had so much fun living abroad. I’m often struck with the realisation that I’m living in a really special time of my life. In some ways, living abroad is just life, but abroad. You have a lot of the same demands on your time: you still have to go for a run to work off the extra burrito, you still have to do the inevitable all-nighter if you leave an assignment to the last minute and you still have to do the dishes. But the very fact that it’s abroad makes even the ordinary extraordinary. I still love the random attacks of joy when I look across San Francisco from Twin Peaks or Land’s End or Dolores Park and I think ‘look at that beautiful city. I LIVE here now!’

2014-11-16 14.01.47

Whether you’re already on your exchange, or if you’ve just decided to go, there will be moments when you think you’ve made a horrible mistake. Whether you’re hit with crippling homesickness, or you miss something important at home, or something about your new culture drives you crazy (yes, America, I’m looking at you and your lack of decent tea), these moments will make you ask, as I have, ‘is the experience worth it?’ I can only tell you that, half a second later, your answer will be exactly the same as mine.

Hannah Brown
hannahsadie@hotmail.co.uk
No Comments

Post A Comment

%d bloggers like this: