Advice from the Early Stages

For the past six or so months I’ve been preparing to study abroad. Since I first submitted my “Phase 1” application I’ve entered various cycles of trying to get ahead, having no more tasks left to complete, forgetting I actually am studying abroad, and then remembering I probably left my application alone long enough to find I’ve accumulated even more tasks. Basically, this entire process has been one big tug-of-war fever dream between telling my friends “oh ya I’m gonna be studying abroad next year” and realizing “oh ya I’m gonna be studying abroad next year”. And yet amidst all the chaos of a sophomore girl trying to get her life together in the last few weeks of spring quarter, it turns out maybe I do have some words of wisdom to share after all. With that, here are three pieces of advice I have for people considering studying abroad:

Organization: Because It’s Aesthetic

One thing about me is that I LOVE being organized. Admittedly, my new current obsession is with Google Calendar, which I have mostly used to color-code my classes and coordinate lunch hangouts with friends. Lately I’ve found it’s been unexpectedly useful in keeping me on track with meetings, reminders, and deadlines as someone who likes to keep everything in her head. I found this was especially helpful in keeping me accountable for information sessions or when I would try to attend drop-in advising hours for my home university, which I became alarmingly good at putting off when it came to “other work”. Scheduling, writing out, or just thinking about even the small parts of my days turned out to be a huge help in visualizing daily goals. Personally, when I have a lot of work to get done, I feel more motivated when I can look at everything in a structured (and colorful) way.

During my planning stages for figuring out what courses to take, I also started using spreadsheets a lot more. This was best put to use mapping out the rest of my four-year plan and calculating how many credits I have or have left to take (disclaimer: I’m basically a noob at using spreadsheets so you don’t really have to know anything to do this). In my research for which program to attend, I also used spreadsheets to keep track of courses that might be available to me, which is ultimately how I ended up choosing my program.

In any case, whether you also use planner apps (also shoutout Notion and the iPhone Notes app), scribble into the corner of your notebook, or are actually artistic and consistent enough to maintain a bullet journal, my first piece of advice would be to just establish some sort of organizational framework for anything you think you might need even if you have nothing to fill it in with yet, because when you do, it’ll be way more fun and will probably make everything make more sense.

Proactivity and Flexibility: What If

As someone who studies computer science, it’s pretty much become second nature for me to look at my life as one big existential if-else statement (and if you ever manage to find a comp sci kid out in the wild, they would probably tell you the same thing). In case you didn’t know what an if-else statement is, it’s basically a bunch of conditional statements for the computer to follow depending on true or false input. That’s all I’ll say before this gets too technical, but aside from sounding like a complete nerd, being able to look at random situations like this has been an oddly convenient and satisfying way to resolve my indecisions and organize backup plans.

At any rate, my main point — and second piece of advice — would be to have a flexible strategy and know your backup plans. At this point I’ve lost track of how many times the order of my initial four-year plan has been rearranged or even completely changed because of restrictions from my home university on certain courses I could take, or the difficulty of taking a particular class abroad I hadn’t initially anticipated. In fact, it’s entirely possible for courses that you submit equivalency requests for or that were already approved in past years to no longer be available by the time you register. If your home university allows it, I would recommend just submitting as many equivalency requests as possible, because you would have approved options for courses you want to take and worst case, you decide you don’t need to take it anymore. Better to be overprepared than underprepared, right?

Resources and Connections: The Power of Friendship and People Who Know What They’re Doing

As a highly independent for-the-most-part introvert, being the first to reach out to anyone for anything is typically not my first thought, but trust when I say attending advising sessions was one of the best decisions I could have made. In fact, I sometimes wish I had done it sooner. There were times I would stop by when I didn’t even know what questions I had, but there was always someone ready to help me stay on track or reassure me that I wasn’t as completely lost as I thought. I’m definitely one of those people who’s taken office hours for granted before, but if I’ve learned anything from this process, it’s that if you have a strong support network, use it. To a similar end, I would also recommend trying to find other people who are going to your program or creating a group chat because a) who doesn’t want more friends and b) misery loves company. You don’t really realize how comforting it is to know other people are also struggling to take their ridiculously specific government-standard student ID picture until it happens to you. More importantly, at the end of the day, you’ll also have something to laugh about and good memories to look back on.