For anyone who has ever done it; is studying abroad worth it?
Yes!
I can’t say anything for the long-term benefits because it was only two years ago, but just the amount you learn and mature, the people you meet, and of course how much fun you have are totally worth it. There’s nothing else like it.
I leave this month.
My impending leave for Spain has this tendency to remind me of my own morality. It seems to me that I feel my current self slowly fading and dying, and I have a foolish notion that, when I land in Spain, I will be reborn whole and new. At least, that is the way that people…
I just remembered that I’m going back to school in less than a month.
I also just remembered that this is the year when I’ll be applying for study abroad programs.
And in a few months I’ll know whether I’m going on the Pacific Rim Program.
I try to imagine how it will change my life, how it will impact me even more than my six-week stay in Japan, but… I know that there will be no way to know until it’s over. I might not ever fully grasp it. Just based on my experience in Japan, there’s so much that can change a person when you immerse in another culture, and it goes way deeper than any books or guides can ever express… but this time, it could be 8 different countries, with countless individual cultures. There’s a Chinese proverb: “Even three miles away, there are entirely different customs.”
There’s no room for expectations, which means I can’t exactly plan a future yet.
I’ll just look forward to the day when it comes.
1. The first character I first fell in love with
2. The character I never expected to love as much as I do now
3. The character everyone else loves that I don’t
4. The character I love that everyone else hates
5. The character I used to love but don’t any longer
6. The character I would totally smooch
7. The character I’d want to be like
8. The character I’d slap
9. A pairing that I love
10. A pairing that I despise
