What Studying Abroad Can Do for You... If You Do It Right

My best friend studied abroad in London the semester before me. When she came back, her stories were all about catching the Tube and going out to clubs and spending gobs of money on shoes she called her "purple England kicks."

I began to dream about what my time in England would be like. Granted, I wasn't staying in London, but I was only a three-hour train ride outside of it. People who had studied before me in the hamlet of Ormskirk, England told me it was so much like being at our small-town home college, Truman State University located in Kirksville, Missouri, that they called it Ormskirksville.

But I had seen the brochures for Edge Hill College and brochures don't lie! I knew the town had a nightclub. The school had a bar/nightclub on campus. And somehow I would find my way to airports so I could make cheap weekend escapes with EasyJet and Ryan Air.

When the van transporting myself and five other naïve American students from the airport pulled into Edge Hill's parking lot, my heart sunk. We were in the middle of a field. I didn't see a town. The dorms were old and dark. Totally unlike the beautiful picture of a building in the brochure. We would later find out that the photo we had assumed was a dorm was actually a picture of the new Student Rec Center that had been placed, for some reason, under the heading "accommodations."

If I learned one thing from studying abroad, it was that everything is not always as it seems.

Aside from in-room sinks that spewed forth black gunk, campus cafeterias that didn't serve us food on Saturdays or Sundays, a campus library that closed early on weeknights and even earlier on weekends, and only Americans and Brits at the college - I expected to congregate with more international students - studying abroad really did have its great moments. Using the whole campus to play nightly games of Manhunt (hide-and-go-seek for big kids) with other students. Cheap airfare. Cheap train fare. Everything within arms-reach if you just took the time to get it.

I could spew forth some mush about how study abroad changed me as a person. I started dating a fellow American who I like to call My First Boyfriend, like a Fisher-Price toy. But I don't know if I came back to America changed and if I did, whether or not I changed for good or for bad. Probably both.

I do know that studying abroad only instilled in me my already growing sense of independence. Toward the end of my stay in Ormskirk, many students went on thrilling trips. To save money, I stuck around the campus hanging out with whoever was still around, my soon-to-be-ex-boyfriend not included. I found, though, that I was happiest just doing my own thing and not trying to be social out of duty. Who cared if I stayed in my room on a Wednesday night and read magazines in bed? It made me happy.

On one particularly sunny Friday, I ate lunch at one of the on-campus restaurants called The Water's Edge (another great thing about Edge Hill College). I contemplated what I could do with an afternoon like this one shining in at me through the glass window. Did I really have to go to class? No. I had already turned in my last paper and the class ran so long for a Friday afternoon class anyway. (Class schedules abroad are not terrible, but just different to get used to.) Listening to my professor talk and talk just to hear herself talk and still not say anything of importance while the rude British students played with their cell phones did not appeal to me. But an afternoon alone?

All of the people I would normally hang out with were not around. Jenni had gone to Burnley with a friend. Danae and Nice Heather had gone to Scotland with Laura. Matt and Lauren were in class.

I was used to doing things on my own and I couldn't waste a gorgeous opportunity to be outside. I decided that I would finish my chicken and mayo jacket potato ("baked potato" in American) and run away to Liverpool, which was 30 minutes away by train, for some afternoon outdoor shopping.

I threw away my trash and ran to the train station - escaping the humdrum campus, cutting class and doing it by myself!

It was moments like these that excited me about being in a foreign place. I could do anything. Every day was a new experience. Every thing I saw or touched or smelled was new to me. I didn't want to miss out on anything.

When I think back to my study abroad experience, I think about the things I did right, such as walking into town and tasting the local cuisine. British bakeries like Sayers are to die for with their windows filled with chicken pasties.

To balance out all the calories from the food, I participated in an aerobics class at Edge Hill's Student Rec Center. One night per week I worked up a sweat with the other British and some American girls.

During my spontaneous moments of exploration, I took a walk through town and came upon a tiny, secluded park where old men practiced Tai Chi while the sun set and British women walked their dogs. It was a peaceful place for a walk or reading Charles Dickens.

A weekend bus excursion to Stratford-Upon-Avon, birthplace of Shakespeare, led Danae and I to meet two lovely women who were locals of Ormskirk. Margaret and Kay had both attended Edge Hill during World War II and regaled us young folk with tales of what life was like back then. Not only did we spend time with them over the weekend, but Margaret invited Danae and I to her home on two separate occasions for an authentic English afternoon tea complete with sandwiches and cakes of every kind and delicious tea. Meeting with locals is quite possibly the best thing one can do when studying abroad.

I also miss the other Americans. When you first arrive in your study abroad locale, you immediately latch on to whoever is there at that moment. After time, you may drift apart from them as you meet new people and discover new things about yourself. By the end of my stay at Edge Hill, I realized just how lovely and funny the people in my very hallway could be. I had been spending so much time with people in another dorm that I had completely missed out on loads of laughs right where I was living. Granted, I still keep in touch with both sets of people (isn't Facebook grand?) but I will remember my last two weeks at Edge Hill as some of the finest, the time when I was really able to let my true self shine through. I'm sorry I kept it away from so many people for so long.

And, as much as I will it to happen, I'm sorry that I can never study abroad again. You go into these things with expectations of how it will turn out, who you will meet, and where you will travel (and you MUST travel). In the end, though, you always feel like there was more you could have done. My advice is to just do what you can and enjoy learning about the land in which you now live and the person you will become.