by Piper McKean| Fall 2024 |
Over the course of the last three months, I have had so many amazing experiences studying abroad in Leipzig, Germany, while also taking fifteen hours of classes. Every day, Monday through Thursday, I had class from eleven to one. On Monday and Wednesday, it was German language class, and on Tuesday and Thursday, at the same time, it was Galatians and Romans. Along with this, I have a class on Monday evenings from two to five, German Culture class, and two online classes, English and Speech. This left Friday through Sunday open for all of us to travel across the continent.
Through this experience, I have learned how to better navigate building friendships and navigating those relationships. There are fifteen people studying abroad in Leipzig this semester, along with our Program Director and the professor traveling with us and his family. There are nineteen of us. This is a lot of people to share the same house with, plus I have two roommates, and that’s not a small amount to share a room with. I have had small quarrels with almost every single person here, but we are all still in this together, so we have to get along. Something that helped all of us bond almost immediately was that our original flight over got cancelled from London to Berlin. This meant the group of us, who were strangers to each other at the time, had to navigate getting our bags, getting to a hotel, and getting back to the airport in the morning to catch the next flight out. We all bonded very quickly and actually started talking to each other, which was not something that happened on the nine-hour flight that got us to London from DFW. We learned how each other worked with stress and travel, and got to know each other in ways that I do not think we would have gotten the chance to if we had not gone through this experience.
The skill of better navigation is one that I have learned very well over the course of this trip. I have been able to visit six different countries over the course of this trip: Germany (obviously), Greece, Denmark, the Netherlands, Belgium, and France. I have taken so many planes, trains, trams, buses, and other kinds of public transport to get to each of these places, and through that, I have learned so much about navigating around with these systems. For example, as part of the program fee, each person who is abroad in Leipzig gets a Deutschland card. This card allows you to take any regional trains, buses, or trams across the entire country and is valid for the whole three months we are here. This has been a huge blessing as it helps us to save money, but at the same time, regional trains are slower, and to get to different places, there are usually several transfers involved. On the weekends that I have utilized this pass, I have had many transfers that are only a few minutes long, but I have not missed a train yet. Though those times are very anxiety-inducing, I have been able to navigate through them and navigate around so many different train stations to make it to the right place.
This time has helped to shape my perspective of the world and my future goals in ways that I never thought it would. I now know how wide the world really is, and have gotten to experience so many cultures and just random things that will forever stay in my mind. As for my future goals, before this trip, I did not really have any, and while I still haven’t quite figured out what I’m doing with my life, I know now that it will include a lot more travel than I originally thought. I loved it. Going around and seeing new things every weekend just for fun was one of the best things I think I could have done this semester.
I am so glad that I was able to go on this trip and grow in so many different ways, and the Honors College was able to help me do that with a travel grant.
