Pro/Con: Studying Abroad

“You want to travel. Why are you not studying abroad?” my brother asked me last Thanksgiving.

“What! Because… and …I…no” I sputtered. The thought was ridiculous. Yeah, it would be cool. But I had this, and what about that. Too much. No.

…then came the list.

I am a fan of the pro/con list. I like the visual, and I like writing things down. So when I made the list for studying abroad, I had fifty reasons not to go and about three reasons to go with one of the three just being the word “Awesome!” Obviously, I should have quit there. But that whole annoying “how great of an opportunity” thing nagged me. Looking back at my list, forty-nine of those reasons were lame excuses, and crossing them off would mean that I would have to work harder than I wanted over the next two years in order to graduate in May 2012. Biting the bullet and wishing that I could punch that annoying nagging in the mouth, I painfully crossed out the lame forty-nine reasons not to go, leaving me with one reason that even the nagging shut up about— people.

I love my family more than my breath. I love my friends from home more than my sleep. But I do not see either of them during the school year; so “people” on the list were my friends at BSC. Studying abroad for my junior year is a once in a lifetime opportunity but so is living at BSC with my friends for that year. I did not want to go a year without being with them, laughing with them, hugging them. And if I left, then I would miss out and maybe fade away to return to a place where I was forgotten and therefore no longer wanted. That scared me. I like to think that I hold an importance in people’s lives, that the campus would drop a few noticeable degrees in energy in my absence.

But the truth is that most people will not notice my going and the campus will not be affected by my absence. And a bigger truth is that a friendship that cannot withstand nine months apart now, will not withstand past graduation. But there are a small number of friends who neither them nor I will toss each other into forgotten memory after we toss our hats into the air. Realizing who these people are is liberating. It allows me to focus. It allows me to leave, knowing that some things even the Atlantic cannot erode.

I will miss them. They will change. I will change. Life for both of us will continue. And that is okay. It diminishes nothing.

So I ask you, “Why are you not studying abroad?” Remember that with an exchange program, you can study abroad for the same or less amount of money that you are paying to study at BSC.