The first London term has ended and I thought it would be appropriate to give my impressions thus far. There are things about going abroad that every student should hear. However, my singular experience does not encompass everything so I will provide you with a few different views on the topic.

The Romantic View: It is a once in a lifetime cultural adventure that will change a person forever. It is the time to put yourself outside of your comfort zone and become a man or woman of the world, to gain knowledge beyond the classroom by getting a deeper understanding of the fantastic variety of the human race. It is a time to spread your field of knowledge across the earth and add wisdom to your youth. It is not an easy endeavor, for it takes courage to go out into the strange world by oneself. It will be difficult study and it will only be harder because of the cultural barrier. But remember, it’s okay to have fun while you do it.

The Cynical View: It is a six-month paid vacation to anywhere in the world. As far as school goes, if you can pull C’s at Wash. U. you can pass anywhere else as well and, since your grades only transfer back as pass or fail, you should be fine. It’s like if you spun a globe around, stopped it with your finger, hired a party jet, flew there, hung out for a couple months doing whatever you pleased, met some locals and got college credit for all of it. It’s great because people think you are brave for doing it. They treat you like you have achieved some sort of sage understanding of the world and think you learned so much from classes at a foreign university when the whole semester was a breeze.

The Realistic View: It is hard, but incredibly fun. Hard because you have no idea what you are doing the first month you are there. I can’t tell you how many awkward social mishaps I have had because there have been too many, though I can tell you that there are way more than in the states, as unbelievable as that is. For about two months I didn’t understand that, in London when someone says to you “You alright?” that they are not asking if you are mentally stable or need medical attention, rather it is more like “What’s up?” So many people asked me if I was alright so frequently that for two months I thought something was seriously not alright with me, when really everyone was being friendly and conversational. This is a fairly innocuous example, but they can get really tough, like when you do not know that you owe somebody money for something and he or she resents you for the rest of the time because of your rudeness.

A semester abroad is also hard because you are learning in a different schooling system. In London, classes do not have a textbook or a reading packet and students are expected to find all of their reading at various libraries in the city. Different countries teach and learn differently and this gets in the way of your ability to quickly suck up knowledge the way you do in the States. You are not in your usual groove, so you can’t kick back and cruise; that is, until, you adapt to the new system.

Honestly though, these difficulties do not even come close to the benefits. Though it is cheesy, experiencing a different culture is mind-expanding in its ability to widen a person’s conception of the various possibilities and forms that human life takes around the planet. At the same time, when abroad, you will be going out all the time (in some cases drinking legally for the first time, for all of those who are 18-20) making new friends, traveling and exploring with some of the old ones and generally having a great time doing whatever makes you happy.

To sum up: do everything you can to go abroad for a semester. It may be the one time in your life where you are given this kind of liberty and license to do whatever you have always wanted to do. If anything, by your third year you will need a break from Wash. U. so take it.

As a postscript, I would like to say that one of the hardest parts about going abroad was jumping through all of the hoops of the Abroad Office. I am sure that I filled out the same form three separate times, all of them asking me if I was sure that I want to go abroad. Yes, I did. It may seem like an endless list of tasks but I promise that one day it stops and you are fully registered to experience your semester somewhere far away, and that it was well worth the effort.

Christian is a junior in Arts & Sciences. He can be reached via e-mail at [email protected]

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