On the eve of my departure for Australia, I am much more nervous than excited. Until this point, spending a semester more than 10,000 miles away from the place I know as home has been a distance event, something I hadn’t fully contextualized. I decided to study abroad to force myself outside of my comfort zone and place myself into an entirely different situation in order to grow and learn. Now that the time is finally here, I am realizing that this exciting situation I have placed myself in is also terrifying. I am about to spend 5 months in a foreign country without my friends and family whom I have relied upon for the last 20 years. A surreal feeling of apprehension and nervousness has started to set in with the realization that the time has finally come to leave this all behind.
In deciding to study abroad, I considered the fact that everyone has always told me it was the best semester of their life or that they regretted never capitalizing on the opportunity while they had it. I thought about how comfortable I’d become in Boston and how Northeastern and the community there was like a second family to me. This had both a pushing and pulling effect on me, in which I had no desire to spend 5 months without my friends but I wanted to have an entirely different experience from that at Northeastern. Above all, I thought about my love for traveling and seeing different parts of the worlds and its cultures and concluded that this was something I wanted to do.
By spending a semester in Melbourne, Australia, I hope to gain a deeper understanding of another country’s culture. In fact, I would love to gain a deeper understanding of as many other countries as possible. I hope to do so by befriending both Australians and students from other countries around the world. This is both exciting and extremely nerve wracking since transcending nationalities is not an obstacle I’ve ever had to encounter. I’m worried that this may prove more difficult than expected and that I may find myself lonely at times. I also hope to achieve this goal by traveling frequently in the area in order to experience a variety of Australian culture, since Australia is actually approximately the same size as the continental U.S.! These travel experiences as well as growing roots in my home university city of Melbourne are what I’m most looking forward to. Despite my sense of uneasiness, I am unbelievably excited to spend a semester abroad in Australia.
