by Ethan Larrew | Fall 2023
Study Abroad: the initial meetings brought indescribable nervousness that I had yet to experience in my college career, filled with the excitement of the potential that lay behind getting accepted, along with what it would mean if I got rejected from traveling abroad. There were conversations from family, there was great celebration when I had been accepted, as well as great contemplation to what I was finally underway to experience. One great thing I learned, now being at the end of my experience, is that pre-departure and any description given hardly elucidate the depth of study abroad and how much will happen. Therefore, there are lessons and understandings that I now feel are definitive to both life and collegiate experience that would have never become an aspect of my life if I had not taken the chance.
My advice then would be, bring an open mind, and have little expectation of what life and culture is like in other parts of the world. Avoid stereotypes that create a false security that, as a student, the world can be fully grasped by reading words on a page in a textbook. Adknowledge that American culture and media also hardly incorporates what it means to be within a country of entirely different people. Realize what it means to be an American through accent and mannerism, experience failure in perspective, and come to understand that every street is definitively different from the roads of Texas. There are routines that humans naturally fall into that make us comfortable, but for the limited time that the dreaming towers of Oxford are the background of the study, I wanted to find any way to make each week invariably different from the last.
To dive into the details: London trips are a great way to witness how the world comes together in a tangible space through seeing the beauty of architecture and an old city. The trip to the Lake District will dwarf any belief that England is just rolling hills and sheep, and hiking around the very hills that Wordsworth channeled into his poems creates a surreal sensation of being on the inspired ground. Traveling to the important authors’ houses in Oxford, be it Tolkien’s or the Kilns, gives appreciation to the human side of intellectually divine writers who make up entire fields of study at Oxford. Journeying to Portsmouth to see the wartime side of England and visiting Scotland or Ireland, if given the opportunity, helps fill the image of what the UK and its history consists of. Visiting the college also provides an excitement towards what the college experience in Oxford consists of, as well as understanding the large differences between one aspect of American and English society.
To explain how I changed, I came to the realization that even nearly three months is just scratching the surface of what a separate country consists of, its struggles, its beauty, and its complexities. I have learned that approaching a difficult and unknown decision will pay off in the long run in unseen ways.
