Advice for the First Six Weeks: Getting Adjusted and Coping with Expectations

It’s been six weeks since I arrived here in London and started this journey, and honestly, most days it’s hard to believe that. While it started off extremely slow, with the first week feeling like it was never going to end, it’s slowly morphed into an experience that feels like it’s going entirely too fast. All of a sudden, one week became four, and now that I feel I’ve finally started getting adjusted to everything – there’s a new fear that’s begun to creep in on me: expectations.

I think for a lot of people when they first decide they want to study abroad, they deal with the extremely natural occurrence of dreaming about what the experience will be like. After all, that’s a huge part of what makes the build-up to the trip fun, and not entirely scary and anxiety-inducing. Unfortunately, sometimes what all the dreaming can leave you with once you get here is a warped sense of what you “should” be doing during every second of the day. No matter how unrealistic it might be, believing in this idea that if you aren’t doing something–anything–you’re wasting your opportunity, is a hard thing to shake. But after being here for a while, I can attest to the fact that shaking off this idea is simply something you’ll have to do, because being stuck in a cycle of feeling bad or guilty for not doing enough will only cost you your real opportunity, which includes enjoying yourself, finding yourself, making mistakes, and learning valuable lessons. Even if it’s not all that exciting.

Part of me has been hesitant to write anything about my experience so far because I didn’t want to make too many judgments or assumptions without the proper time to see if they were true or not. I know personally, I have a lot of perfectionistic tendencies that lead me to want everything to be as perfect as possible, and the truth is: nothing in life is like that, and neither is study abroad. Don’t get me wrong, it’s an amazing experience, but it’s not always going to be what you expected it to be. And that’s okay!

Personally, I’ve found myself so much just enjoying existing here in this space that it can sometimes feel like I completely take it for granted – like I’m not doing enough. Like all my friends and family back home expect me to be living these grandeur adventures every day when in reality, my day mostly consists of going to school, reading, writing, and studying (sometimes the study part in study abroad can evade us when we’re first plotting out our daily adventures). I know there’s a lot of things I haven’t done yet, but I think it’s important not to get freaked out about that. It’s important to remember that you still have time, and the longer you’re here – the easier it will become to push yourself to have those experiences and adventures.

Speaking of which, when it comes to getting adjusted to a new place, really the most important advice I can give someone is to just keep going. Just keep living your life, try your hardest not to get too caught up in the parts that aren’t perfect or that don’t exactly meet your expectations (though that can certainly be hard at times). Remember: it takes time to grow and change and push yourself. You don’t need to be everything all at once, and you don’t need to live up to crazy high expectations of what you should be doing.

I know personally, I’m the type of person who can take a while to get adjusted to a new place. I mean, it took me basically the entire first year of my college experience to truly find my footing. And yet despite knowing this about myself already, I must admit there was a part of me silently hoping that when it came to studying abroad, that it would be different, that I would be different. I think there’s a desire within a lot of us who want to get away, a desire to all of a sudden find ourselves, as if the perfect, ideal, best versions of ourselves are walking amongst the streets of London, Rome, Seoul, just waiting for us to find them, step into them, and become them. But the more time I spend here, the more I realize that’s not exactly true. Growth is growth, regardless of where you are. It might be expedited given the new environment, but probably not enough to where you notice it overnight.

I’m about halfway through the first part of my semester (the part before exam season), and I so desperately want to make the most of it. But I’ve realized at this point that to make the most of it, sometimes you have to push yourself in that direction. With school, it can become very easy to get sucked up into the typical hustle of daily academia, and after all that’s over, relaxing and taking comfort in the normal things might be all you really want to do. I don’t think that makes an experience any less important or memorable, because sometimes it really is the little things we’ll remember the most. But I also know that unlike in novels, adventures don’t just happen upon us, we have to seek them out. It can be scary at times, but it’s a fear I am trying to push myself to dive into. Because I know in the end, it’ll be worth it.

I think what I've found is that sometimes it’s about making the most of an experience, and sometimes it’s just about existing within the experience. And one of the hardest things you have to do is find a balance between being kind to yourself and pushing yourself, all while managing not to lose sight of the fact that both are just as important when it comes to making the most of an experience. Because at the end of the day, no matter what you’re doing, remember that you’re in [fill-in-the-blank] and that in itself is incredible!