It’s hard to believe that less than two weeks ago I was in, much less living, in another country. Even though it’s easy to generalize the abroad experience as one that is ‘amazing’ or ‘life-changing,’ I think that there are certain aspects of it that are looked over or forgotten. My cumulative experience abroad is most definitely something I will never forget, but I think it was the little things—the experience of actually living in another country—that made my time in Denmark such an influential time in my life. Before I left for my semester abroad, I wish I would have been told to be aware of these little challenges or dilemmas so that I could have embraced them as they were happening instead of feeling as if I wasn’t doing something right. Here is my honest advice for someone getting ready to spend their semester abroad:
Traveling is not the same as living. It’s really easy to confuse the two. Before I found myself in Copenhagen, I was under the impression that study abroad was akin to a four- month vacation. I’ve also heard of people electing not to study abroad at all because they feel they’re well-traveled. Although I did travel extensively and was able to visit places all over Europe, most of my time was spent adjusting to a normal life in another country. You do a lot when you live in a country that you wouldn’t do just traveling through it. I had to learn how to navigate public transportation, decipher Danish in the grocery store, and find the nearest laundromat. It was these things, the things that you don’t often think about, that were so important to my experience. I wasn’t just a visitor in another country, I was someone trying to adapt to the way of life in another culture.
It’s okay to feel uncomfortable sometimes. You’re told before you leave that you should anticipate culture shock before you experience assimilation. However, I assumed that I might feel culture shock for a few days or, at most, a few weeks, but that by the time I was preparing to return home I wouldn’t feel any sort of discomfort in my environment. But that wasn’t the case. I felt discomfort at different times throughout my entire experience, and these were the moments that were both struggles and triumphs in my day-to-day experience. Sometimes I would feel out of place when I couldn’t communicate in Danish, buy something in 7-Eleven without the clerk assuming me to be American, or accidentally getting lost in a city I had lived in for the past four months. At the end of my experience, I realized that it was entirely normal for me to feel that way. In fact, if I didn’t feel that way occasionally, I might not have realized that I was living in a foreign country and embraced its culture as one distinct from my own.
Being abroad is not just about partying. I think it would be fair to say that most students expect to be doing their fair share of partying while abroad. And, honestly, there is a decent amount of partying that goes on. But, in looking back at my experience, it won’t be the late nights out that I will remember the most. For me, and this aspect of the experience is something I’m sure varies from person to person, my time abroad was a far more internal experience than I ever expected it to be. Being abroad allowed me time to identify my interests, to put myself outside of my comfort zone, and to meet people from all around the world. It’s not the parties that I’ll remember, so much as the personal growth that took place over the four months I spent in Copenhagen.
Learning takes place in and outside of the classroom. I would argue that, for the most part, the ‘studying’ part of studying abroad is not often the only priority for students. And it shouldn’t be. Although I learned a lot from my classes abroad and was able to take courses that I wouldn’t have been able to take at Georgetown, much of my learning took place outside of the classroom. There were many times I was huddled up with a group of friends trying to read a map and figure out where we were going, or trying to communicate with someone that didn’t speak English well. In the very act of traveling from country to country in such a condensed amount of time, I learned more about the places I visited than I ever have had the attention to learn about in a book. I visited amazing museums, saw plays and ballets, and ate at world-famous restaurants. Although I was in a classroom in Denmark most of the week, Europe was the classroom where I learned the most.
You can make American friends too. Even though making foreign friends is important and a nice way to get another perspective on a culture, it’s okay to make American friends too. One of the coolest things for me about being abroad was that I made American friends and even met people from Georgetown that I didn’t know before and am excited to see next semester. I think that being abroad should be about meeting people of all different backgrounds, American or not. Not only do I have friends scattered all over Europe, I also now have friends across the United States at universities from California to New York.
Study abroad is not only something you enjoy, it’s something you survive. Although students returning from being abroad are likely to describe their experience in grandiose language, I think that being abroad is really a survival experience in some ways. Living abroad is a challenging experience, but it’s one that I am incredibly proud of myself for completing. There were definitely times that I was homesick, frustrated, or annoyed. But the times I spent with new friends, discovering new places far overshadow any struggles I may have experienced. After completing a semester abroad, I can’t think of a college experience without it. It not only opened my eyes to a different part of the world, it made me appreciative of my own country and excited to return back to my home university.
All in all, I would say that my experience was ‘amazing’ and ‘life-changing.’ But those two words shouldn’t be confused with ‘easy’ and ‘struggle-free.’ I don’t think that my study abroad experience is over though. I think that my time in Denmark will mean even more to me as I have time to reflect on how my time abroad affected my education, both academically and personally. In that way, I think studying abroad is an ‘after-experience,’ an experience you can’t appreciate in its entirety until after you’ve realized just how much you’ve done, big or small.
