Wrapping Up

Going abroad proved to be the great adventure I had pictured all those months ago when I was writing my first correspondent post. I was so happy when I arrived and got over my first hurdles. I remember being extremely nervous about making friends, and yet, within the first few hours, I found my closest friends for the rest of my time abroad. Though it may seem like a small piece of living abroad, those friendships really allowed me to acclimate and feel comfortable in a space where I was so uncomfortable at first. As for acclimating, I would argue there are some things I never adjusted to: it was easy for me to cook with new ingredients and run new routes, but it was pretty difficult for me to feel fully comfortable in the new culture and location. Life in Germany is quite different from life in America, and I slowly learned to cherish that.

As a quick note before jumping into reflections, I’d like to address something extremely important that can sometimes be ignored. In the last month of my time in Germany, when the sun wasn’t out for nearly two weeks and I missed my family because of the holidays, there were moments when I was confronted with challenges I don’t typically face. Mental health is important, and it’s easy for the conversation around one’s mental state to get left behind in the busyness and excitement of study abroad. Following disappointing change in America while abroad, I was also confronted with heavy emotions regarding my home country. My suggestion for not letting any of the heavy emotions swallow you up would be to carve out time each day for yourself or even use the time to go explore, enjoy, and discover Freiburg. It may feel like you have no time or you have other days to tour the city, but each of my fellow IES Abroad students reflected that they needed to cram activities into the last week because they delayed wandering around Freiburg for so long. Get to know the city you live in! Four months may seem like ages, but it’s truly just a blink of an eye in comparison with your entire life. Another pitfall while studying abroad, that leads to both mental health problems and delay in home exploration, is leaving each weekend to travel. Obviously, it’s important to take advantage of the cheap flights to beautiful places while in Europe, but I think there’s too much of a go-go-go nature in study abroad that people shouldn’t feel obligated to partake in. I’m convinced this is damaging to your mental health after a while because people never allow their brain to process a new home. Spending time (outside) in Freiburg and at my WG (flat) really helped me face my more melancholy feelings and eventually overcome them. Overall, the difficult feelings and emotions that arise during studying abroad should be confronted, not avoided. 

My closing thought for the surprises and challenges of studying abroad is that I was surprised by the sense of patriotism I slowly gained while in Germany. I think that it’s easy for me to judge something I belong to, or think that the grass is greener on the other side. Studying abroad in Freiburg granted me a lot of unique opportunities, but it also offered me perspective. The United States is deeply flawed, and not enough people seem to be able to respect those with differing opinions. However, every country struggles in different ways. Coupled with this new sense of patriotism was a more complicated paradox: I often caught myself thinking that some things are so much better in America, and yet when I returned and expected to see perfection, there were even greater problems. When I was confronted with the fact that maybe the America I had missed wasn’t the America that I was coming home to, there were larger implications for my newfound patriotism. To slowly descend and then cling to my soapbox, the opportunity to study abroad allowed me an opposing vantage point, along with a greater sense of appreciation and understanding for a complicated relationship with my home. 

As for my closing thoughts for this blog, on a surface level, being able to write regularly has been good for my writing skills and personal reflection abilities (along with my time management skills). It’s made me consider aspects of life that I rarely consider, along with having to explain my thoughts in a concise and decipherable manner. On a deeper level, it made me catalog my thoughts about studying abroad and truly reflect on my experiences. I think this was valuable for my development not only as a writer, but also as a person. For now, this has reemphasized the importance of journaling and note keeping, and pushed me towards creating a blog outside of studying abroad. I’m also compelled to encourage others who are planning on studying abroad to keep a blog or other form of documentation of their life in a new place. I would also make the case that, even though life is fun and new and exciting abroad, life at home is worth documenting too.