Travel | Tips | Study Abroad
Studying Abroad - Expectations vs Reality
Everyone always talks about how incredible studying abroad is, but people rarely talk about what it’s really like.
Expectation: You’ll make a ton of friends right away Reality: It takes a while to meet people and make friends
You’re living alone in a foreign country. There’s probably a language barrier. By the time you get to that university, most people already have their own friend group and aren’t really looking for a new friend group after the first year.
There’s always the novelty of being the new foreign person and that does tend to help with making friends. But sometimes it can be hard to find people that you genuinely like that also want to do the same things as you.
Expectation: You’ll become quickly bilingual Reality: Becoming bilingual takes years of studying
Language learning is frustrating. I spent 12 years learning French, I got my B2 in grade 12 and moved to France the year after. I thought I was fully bilingual. I had no issues understanding what was being taught in class but trying to follow and understand a casual conversation in France was rough for a while.
Learning a new language takes a while, and if you aren’t coming to the country with a decent foundation, it can be even harder. I don’t mean to scare anyone away from learning a new language, but I think that it’s important to prepare yourself and know what you’re walking into.
The French you learn at school and casual French are two completely different things. French slang has this thing called “Verlan” and it takes a while to get used to. Verlan is where they take a word and then flip it. So the word “Merci” would be flipped to say “Cimer”.
It’s pretty funny because the word “verlan” is the flipped version of “à l’envers” which means Backwards in French.
Expectations: You’ll make a ton of friends for life Reality: You’ll make lots of friends but most of them won’t last for more than a couple of years after you go back home.
By the time you got to your country, most people already have their friend groups established and aren’t really looking to make new friends. I’m not saying that you won’t make friends, but it might just take a little longer than you thought.
And the rough part of studying abroad is that you will eventually have to go home. And of all the friends you made, only a few will really be life-long friends.
It really sucks because at the time you think that you’re going to be best friends forever but sometimes it's really hard to keep those friendships when you're so far apart.
Expectation: You’ll be travelling a lot Reality: You might get too tired to travel
Studying abroad is great but also incredibly exhausting. I grew up learning and speaking French but speaking French at school and doing homework is not the same as living your life in French.
On top of that, you also can’t forget that you have classes to attend and you still have to make time to study and do homework.
If you’re only abroad for around 6 months then you can probably push through the exhaustion, but after a while, the toll of everything you need and want to do starts weighing on you. You want to make the most of living abroad so you make a list of everything you want to do: make lifelong friends, explore your city, take day trips to other cities, weekend trips to other counties, party every weekend, dinners with your friends, attending classes, doing homework…
There’s always so much to do and so little time to do it. You fill your schedule up so that you get to do everything but it really gets exhausting and sometimes you need to take breaks to try to recover.
Final thoughts
Studying abroad is great but when I first moved here, there was a lot that I wasn’t prepared for and I wish that I had been a little more prepared. But even though there were some big surprises, I’d still recommend studying abroad to everyone.
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