4 Things Nobody Tells You About Studying Abroad

Studying abroad can be HARD. Yeah, it’s true that it can be the “best time of your life” but it’s not all sunshine and roses. Just like everything else, there and many ups and downs that you won’t be expecting, even if your overall experience is a 10/10 and you raveeee to your friends and family about how you feel enlightened and cultured. It’s not as if though Europe or Asia or Africa (or whatever you fancy) lacks all of the problems that you have at home. It may be foreign to you, but it’s not magic.

1. You’re alone

It depends on your program, but mine was not faculty led, so this was my situation:

Sometimes, you’re alone. I didn’t know anyone that I was supposed to live with and I didn’t know anyone at my uni. I had no choice but to adopt a “suck it up buttercup” can-do attitude and go out of my way to talk to people….which takes a LOT of energy (ugh). But I learned that with the exhaustion of outgoingness, you can build yourself a family out of strangers.

2. You must adult

I learned how to cook, grocery shop, and find everything I needed in a place that “spoke my language” yet a couldn’t understand a damn word they said. At first...now I’m still shouting, “Dad!!! The kettle has gone off!!!” Much to the confused looks of family and friends. Whoops. You have to figure out how to plan trips and book things at a somewhat decent cost. Props to my mom for planning vacations all of these years because DAMN did I need a vaca after all of that work.

3. You fall in love

You fall in love with people, places, and food (fish and chips by the ocean is just…..omg). You learn to love the sunsets that paint the beach, because you know in a few months you’ll stop seeing them. You learn to love those hole in the wall pubs and the crazy nights out with your friends, because you don’t know when you can make those memories again. You learn to cope with heartbreak, because where you live might steal your heart, and then you have to go home like it never happened.

4. You miss everything

Okay, not everything. I still hate certain professors, certain people, and certain habits of my adopted culture, but despite so many -let’s be honest- crappy things that happened to me on my trip, I somehow still miss it. It’s been a year since I was there and I don’t think a day goes by when something hasn’t reminded of that time that my boots soaked through in Paris, I holed up in a room with a Floridian pal eating popcorn and studying, or I was sitting in a basement somewhere in Prague, listening to local jazz musicians. Even your favorite moments suddenly become bittersweet.

Part of the process is learning to love, and let go….except I had to learn the ‘let go’ part the hard way through literal wrenching heartache. But alas, it is there and just as prevalent a part of the experience as the loving. It’s frustrating, because nobody from home will ever quite understand the experiences that touched your heart that you just want to share, but that doesn’t make them less valuable.

In the end, living somewhere else can teach you to appreciate the little things, the seemingly “irrelevant” details, and how to cherish the moment, because tomorrow, it could all be gone.