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Why Mindy Kaling’s Life is Just Like Abroad

This article is written by a student writer from the Her Campus at Kenyon chapter.

Mindy Kaling is definitely among Her Campus Kenyon’s favorite empowered female celebrities. As she loves to point out, she’s a “strong woman of color” and as we see through her antics of being a successful gynecologist with an utterly unsuccessful love life, she’s also hilarious. Maybe I just want to be Mindy Kaling (Okay, yes, I do. Have you seen her Instagram page, people?), but I’m finding studying abroad in England to be eerily similar to Mindy’s life in Manhattan. I am not a successful gynecologist, and refuse to admit on the internet to an utterly unsuccessful love life, so there clearly have to be some universal truths going on here.

1. Phone plans are ridiculously expensive abroad so you need to resort to using airplane mode. Constantly hunting for wi-fi to make any sort of contact with humanity can be a struggle.

2. Most collegiettes studying abroad in England have the same marital goal in mind, and I have a feeling we won’t all fit in the same Royal family.

3. Keeping in touch with friends and family back home is tough, so you have to be creative.

4. Sometimes when you’re abroad, you just crave some good old-fashioned American-style carbs. (Foremost: PANCAKES. Love me some crepes but get your flat breakfast breads straight please, Europe).

5. On that note, even if you’ve never been particularly patriotic being in a different country somehow makes you proud of what you complain about at home.

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6. At least a few British boys have tried to hit on you like this (and it may have worked).

7. It’s halfway through the semester and your friends back home are getting a little fed up hearing about your unwise “I’m in a new country” antics.

8. You got some touristy photos with the Eiffel tower, Big Ben, and the leaning tower of Pisa, but now that you’re feeling like a “local,” your tagged photos on Facebook are beginning to deteriorate in their quality…

9. This is what you try to tell yourself as you pack for a weekend trip flying on Ryanair where you can officially pack less than one pound of stuff.

10. You’ve realized the sad truth that it’s not nearly as cool and ironic to like One Direction abroad as it is in America.

11. And finally, unlike at Kenyon, you will meet people who have not read Harry Potter and probably still like them as it’s also not as common to read Harry Potter here, either. Going abroad is all about expanding your horizons and meeting new types of people (and then converting the muggles to wizardry)!

Ally Bruschi is a senior political science major at Kenyon College. She spent this past summer interning as a writer with both The Daily Meal, a digital media group  dedicated to "all things food and drink" and The Borgen Project, a non-profit organization that partners with U.S. policymakers to alleviate global poverty. Before entering the "real world" of jobs, however, Ally spent many summers as a counselor at an all-girls summer camp in Vermont, aka the most wonderful place on earth. A good book, a jar of peanut butter, a well-crafted Spotify playlist, and a lazy dog could get her through even the worst of days.