Sam GuzikWelcome to Wash. U. Now get ready to leave. Come here, get comfortable, but don’t get complacent. Don’t get me wrong, Wash. U. is great. Savor your first couple of years here. Go to Bear’s Den at 2 a.m., read out on the hammocks, pull all-nighters, make good friends, figure out what you want, expand your mind. And then go abroad. Study abroad is an opportunity, so if there is any way you can wrangle your schedule so you can go, do it, seize it. When else in your life can you just take off for some place you never even thought you’d go, call it home for five or six months, and still be (kind of) a responsible human being?
Ok, I’m biased. I’m writing this article from my beat up sofa in New Zealand. I’ve been here for about five months-finals are next week. But guess what I did last weekend? Saturday, I rented a car with a few friends and drove through the North Island countryside to the Waitomo Caves. Upon arrival, we wriggled our way into wetsuits, put on our headlamps, and selected suitable sized innertubes. We carefully crawled and slid through a hole in the ground-the entrance to the caves. It was completely black inside, and we used our innertubes to float down the river that courses through the caves. Occasionally we jumped off waterfalls. All along the walls and ceiling were the green-blue lights of thousands of tiny glowworms. And Sunday, we headed up to the famous beaches of the Coromandel where we snorkeled along an underwater trail. Oh, and Thursday I took a ferry over to Tiritiri Matangi, a bird reserve off the coast of Auckland. I saw an Orca whale and little blue penguins. Today I should study, but I’m thinking about a trip to the aquarium first.
Studying abroad has been an amazing experience. Not that it’s always been easy. I had a lot of ambivalence about going abroad-I love Wash. U., I love my friends, I enjoy my classes and one semester out of eight can feel like a lot to give up. And while being abroad is incredible, it can also feel isolating, stressful and downright exhausting. But it’s worth it. It’s so worth it. My time here has been important in ways I wasn’t expecting. I expected to meet people from all over the world, be adventurous, travel, see beautiful places, climb a glacier. I didn’t expect that being here, having time to be by myself and being forced to forge my own way would have such a profound effect on me.
Wash. U. is an intense environment. They’ll have you going so fast and so hard that you’ll forget to step back and take a look at yourself. Being abroad has given me a chance to process myself in a new and exotic context. I’ve had time to get to know myself here (as sappy as that may sound). I can’t tell you how much I’ve valued this whole bizarre experience. And did you know that they don’t refrigerate their eggs in New Zealand? And they say “sweet as” all the time? And the grocery store is called “foodtown”? I didn’t know-now I do.
So, think about studying abroad in your junior year. Plan ahead and arrange your schedule so that you are able to go. Start imagining places you’d like to experience, places you wouldn’t mind calling “home” for five or six months. I had friends this semester in Morocco, Australia, Vietnam, South Africa, Brazil, Israel, Scotland and Bolivia. Pick somewhere and go. Don’t get too bogged down by major requirements, double major requirements and those dumb clusters to leave the country for a semester. Plan ahead and get excited. And enjoy Wash. U. Have a great freshman year.
Tess Croner is a senior in the College of Arts & Sciences and a forum editor. She can be reached by e-mail at forum@studlife.com.