When I got my acceptance letter to Boston University for the College of General Studies, an immense sensation of relief washed over me. College applications had taken me on a wildly strenuous journey, and I was overjoyed to finally have an answer to the dreaded question, “What are your plans for next year?”
As a part of CGS, I would be given a gap semester in the fall before arriving on campus for the spring semester and making up for my missed credits with a jam-packed, one-month study abroad in London during the summer.
However, my peace was short-lived as I was now faced with the task of explaining and re-explaining my plans for my academic career to every single person. While I felt it was fairly simple, the ways my plan deviated from the norms seemed to confuse everyone.
Over time, this attitude began to discourage me. Classmates, coworkers, and friends would nod their heads, but it was obvious they didn’t really understand why I didn’t follow a more typical pattern.
It’s embarrassing to admit, but overcoming this social stigma was a bit difficult. Nobody wants to acknowledge that they’re affected by the opinions of others, and I’d never want to let anybody influence a choice in my life as significant as my education.
Eventually, I was able to let it go enough to plan my semester. My parents told me that they would support me in doing anything I wanted, but I couldn’t stay in my hometown. That was fair, I supposed. What was the point of being given an opportunity if I wasn’t going to use it?
So I decided to embrace the unknowns I feared and booked a flight out of my comfort zone: to Medellin, Colombia. I lived there for three months, and without knowing anybody, slowly began to find my place in the city. While I did some volunteer work, it was in the afternoon and only four days a week, so I had significant amounts of time to, for lack of a better term, just live.
Suddenly, I found myself experiencing the strangest and most liberating moments of my life thus far. I knew nobody there, and they didn’t know me. Every conversation I had was rich with opportunity, every missed metro stop took me to a market or street concert I wouldn’t have otherwise seen. I learned to be comfortable with being uncomfortable and found enjoyment in experiencing life solo.
People find themselves desperately searching for these skills once they enter college in a mad rush to find both friends and themselves in a new environment. However, when I arrived at BU, I was armed with a different perspective.Â
As all students fear, the moments came when I had nobody to eat lunch with, or when I had to walk into an orientation activity without a single friend. If the social pressure began to overwhelm me, I could take a moment and remember that I had lived a version of this experience before.
My gap semester was a perfect microcosm of the college adventure, so I’m no stranger to the loneliness, bravery, and learning curve it takes to be successful in university. I’ve had many missteps in college and will surely have many more, but when I reach those points, I lean on my memories to remind me that I’ve done it all before.
“It’s just college,” I think to myself, “How hard can it be?”
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