The Importance of Going With The Flow

Sometimes, not everything goes as planned. I almost made it through the entire semester without any flight mishaps, until I attempted to travel to Ibiza. Read along to hear about my experience, and how we were able to change our plans!

I was so excited to go on my final trip of the semester, which was to Ibiza. I sat at the Amsterdam Schiphol Airport after going through security and just one hour before my flight was supposed to take off, when suddenly I received an email saying that my flight had been canceled. I instantly panicked because I had not had to deal with an experience like this before, but I started researching flights that would get us there on time. When there were none to be found, my friend that I was traveling with and I decided to find a staff member to talk to. He informed us that there were no flights from Amsterdam to Ibiza until 2 days after our original departure date, so we started to lose hope. Suddenly, he let us know that there was a flight departing from Rotterdam the next morning, so we quickly booked the flight to ensure our spots were secured. 

Personally, I am someone who likes things to be set in stone and planned in advance, and when something goes wrong or something changes at the last minute, I get a little bit worked up. If there is anything that I learned during my study abroad experience, it is that it is important to be able to just go with the flow. Especially being in a foreign country, I thought that it would be beneficial for me to plan everything out down to the minute to make sure that my time was being used efficiently, and that everything got done that needed to get done. This actually ended up not being the case at all, and actually probably hurt my experience in the beginning of me being there. In my experience, some of the best days that I had with my friends during my time abroad were the days where we just went with the flow and did whatever we felt like doing at that very moment. It is so much less stressful to live life this way, and I will forever be grateful that studying abroad taught me this in real time. 

I believe that things just have a way of working themselves out. So, my flight to Ibiza for example was canceled which did give us some stress about the trip, but it all worked itself out and we were able to make it there and still enjoy our weekend plans. Something that I have been told recently that really resonated with me is that things always seem to work out even if they don't “work out.” 

If you are someone who also tends to be a little uptight at times and has a difficult time going with the flow, studying abroad may be challenging at first but I can promise you that you truly will benefit from it in this way as well as many others.