T-Minus 8 Days to Abroad

Waiting can be a funny thing. Christmas has always been my favorite time of year, and as a kid I would countdown to the season the minute Christmas day ended. Only 11 more months.. 10 more months… The agonizing countdown would be the ultimate test on my unexercised kid patience every year. Then all of a sudden, “the most wonderful time of the year” would come upon us and the window of time between Thanksgiving and my favorite holiday would breeze by in the blink of an eye. December 26th would come all too quickly and my defeated kid self would have to start the countdown all over again.

Now, what does this have to do with anything?

I’d known that I wanted to study abroad ever since I started looking at colleges over two years ago. The amazing abroad program is actually one of the things that drew me to Marist in the first place. I knew I wanted to study abroad in my junior year, and I knew it was going to be in the fall semester. I sent in my application to the program almost 8 months ago and received my acceptance a few months later. I’ve gone to seminars, gotten a Visa, selected my classes, applied for housing. I’ve had more than enough time to mentally prepare. But, now that the long awaited adventure is almost here I can’t help but think, “Whoa hold on… I’m going NOW?!”

You see, unlike a kid at Christmas who has to do no preparation for the holiday whatsoever, there are so many loose ends to tie up in the few days leading up to moving your life across an entire ocean for 4 and half months. You need to figure out what to pack (or a greater challenge for me, what not to pack), you need to finally start using the Italian Rosetta Stone that your mom got you for Christmas because you are suddenly overwhelmed by the fact that you don’t speak a lick of Italian, and you need to prepare yourself for the several heartfelt goodbyes that are about to take place. I’ve been excited about this trip for as long as I can remember, but I can’t help but wish I had just one more week at home.

Although, what I presume will be one of the most liberating things about this experience is being forced to jump without necessarily knowing how cold the water is, so to speak. I’m not sure if she coined this phrase, but my mom recently said to me, “Your life is on the opposite side of your fear.” She said that the most rewarding experiences in this life are going to be the things you don’t feel you’re ready for when they begin. And we all know our mothers are always right!

Innately, humans want to avoid change like the plague. I assume this stems from some evolutionary survival crap that our ancestors developed billions of years ago. But today, without stressors like needing to know where to hunt and kill our food, I feel this instinct is somewhat unnecessary. It’s not like in every new phase of our life there is going to be a wooly mammoth waiting to bring our impending doom.

However, there is one main reason I know that going abroad is going to be the best decision I have ever made. There are moments when I am able to quiet down all the stupid voices in my head rattling off things I need to do or all the things that could go wrong. In those moments I am able to imagine what it must feel like to walk down the street from my apartment, and casually pass The Duomo on my way to class. I imagine what it will be like to stand in front of a monument that is hundreds, or even thousands of years old. I imagine how humbling it will be to be totally immersed in a culture completely different from my own, a luxury that not everyone gets to experience. In these moments, all of the feelings of anxiety or nervousness are immediately replaced by intense appreciation and excitement. And if that’s how I feel just thinking about these moments, I can’t wait to see how I’ll feel once they become a reality.