Will This Be One of Those Cheesy, Inspirational Blogs About How Studying Abroad Changed Your Life?

I’m Schyler. (Skyl-ler.) Yeah, like Skyler from Breaking Bad.  I go to UNC-Chapel Hill. I’m originally from a small town in North Carolina. I’m majoring in journalism and minoring in writing for the screen and stage. After college, I plan to move to Los Angeles.

Here are things I love:

• Film and television, specifically Lost, Sherlock, and anything made by the Coen brothers.
• Benedict Cumberbatch
• Zooey Deschanel
• Stephen King
• Sansa Stark
• Competition (Winning, just to be clear. I love winning.)

Bam. Now you know me. We can get to the point.

I’m leaving for Dublin, Ireland on June 4th. I’ll return July 19th. I’m taking two classes there. I’ll be living in an apartment with people I’ve never met. I’m told it has Internet. (Thank goodness.) That’s what I know.

When I told my friend I’d be blogging about my summer, she groaned and said, “Will this be one of those cheesy, inspirational blogs about how studying abroad changed your life?”

Fair question. We’ve all seen those blogs, and like my friend, I’m tired of them. While I can’t promise that I won’t end up rambling about how my life has changed, I can promise to try to be different. Or at least to be honest. If we can’t be honest in our writing, where can we be?

So, I promise to be honest. I’ll share the positive and the negative aspects of this journey, the good and the bad days. I won’t fluff this up. If Ireland smells gross, I’ll tell you. If the food is weird, I’ll tell you that too.

I’m trying not to expect anything specific. I want to appreciate things as they come, instead of feeling as if I need to check experiences off a list. My dad has always told me, “Expect the worst and you’ll never be disappointed.” He uses the phrase as a sort of dark joke, but I think the sentiment has merit. I’m not expecting bad things, by any means. That’s no way to live. But I’m trying to live without expectations.

I want the same things from Ireland that I want from everything: to have a good time, to grow, to learn.

Signing up to study abroad was a fairly spontaneous act. This wasn’t a lifelong goal or a romantic dream. My dream was to go to St. Andrews in Scotland. I once read a great Merlin/Arthur fanfic set there and it stuck with me. But since St. Andrews didn’t fit into my schedule, I wound up here.

Don’t get me wrong: I am psyched to be doing this. It’s probably the coolest thing I’ve ever done. But I won’t lie about how I got to this point. (See, there’s that honesty we talked about.)

Anyway, I’m not supposed to exceed 500 words in these posts, which is going to be a legitimate struggle for me, so that’s all for now.

I’ll let you kids know when something cool happens.

See you soon, Ireland.