Study abroad is now academy standard, but agitative nonetheless

There’s still nearly a month left in the semester and my head is already miles away.It’s become a standard rite of passage for University students to study abroad. For a lot of us, it’s a feasible reality. It’s one of the first things I remember hearing about when I did a college visit here. Over time, studying abroad has become a kind of normalcy in the college experience. It’s a pretty extraordinary experience that, out of mounting prevalence, we now see as ordinary.I’ve been going through this year with the pretty messed up idea that studying abroad is a more-or-less common thing. I would estimate that two out of every three of my friends will be abroad while I’m in Vienna next semester in England, Italy, Spain, Costa Rica and France (to name a few) all of whom are around to commiserate about finding flights, getting vaccinations, applying for student visas from various international consulates and the endless other items of planning that have become an increasingly daunting part of our everyday lives.I’d been so wrapped up in this idea that pretty much everyone goes abroad that I didn’t realize how wrong that is and how lucky I am that I can do it.Oddly, it was a trip to the dentist’s office that put all of this in perspective.

It was early in the morning, and I was trying very hard not to drool on myself while five or so sharp metal tools picked and prodded at my mouth. The chatty hygienist didn’t seem to notice my incapacity to speak coherently and proceeded to ask me a thousand questions, all halfheartedly answered with hand motions and occasional mumbling.When I told her about my plans to spend half a year in Austria, she was fascinated. study abroad in Austria.After asking what I’d be doing, where I would live, what they eat, what I’ll do if I can’t translate German well enough none of which I knew the answer to she said a strange thing:You’re so brave.I was thrown off; wasn’t I just doing the same thing a couple thousand other Illinois students do every year?

And though I’d hardly consider my impending experience abroad to be an act of bravery, I realized that I had gotten so caught up in thinking it was such an ordinary thing I forgot to be excited and scared and all of those other things you should probably feel when you’re mere months away from shipping off to the other side of the world. Like that I should have probably paid more attention in that 8 a.m. beginner’s German class. Or that I need some serious help not surpassing the acceptable weight of international baggage (which, might I add, isn’t nearly enough to account for all those shoes I’ll need).

That’s when I realized it this thing a lot of us are about to do is actually really cool, and not ordinary in the least.I think about all of the stories I’ve heard about my friends, or even total strangers who have studied abroad stories about nearly being trampled by rowdy soccer fans during the World Cup, of rendezvousing with the French societal elites, of having credit cards stolen to make exorbitant purchases miles away in Morocco, of being arrested for drug possession and thrown into Nicaraguan outdoors prison for days. It’s all a little overwhelming. But those things don’t typically happen here in America, and they certainly don’t happen in Champaign.I know I’m probably still a few months, a few piles of paperwork and five or so vaccinations away from being genuinely ready for my time abroad, but I’ve decided to let myself be as excited as I want. Though studying abroad itself has become a pretty ordinary thing here, I know our experiences will be anything but.