The week before spring break, one of my friends came up to me, and our conversation went something like this:
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Her: So my psych professor is teaching in Spain next semester, and I’m thinking about going to research with him.
Me: Wow that’s awesome! You should totally do it!
Her: You wanna come?
Me: Wait what?
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And that is basically how we decided to defer graduation for a semester and study abroad in San Sebastián, Spain.
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We are your typical college seniors. We were here for four years and on track to graduate on time. I mean, we’d already applied for the graduation ceremony! So you can imagine the surprised reactions we got when we told people our plans – my favorite is the student who was working at the study abroad office the day we went to set up appointments. “Defer graduation – bold move.” This was March 7th. Graduation is May 12th. That’s kind of been our adopted motto throughout this process, though. Bold move. It is a bold move to decide, with 66 days until graduation, that you actually aren’t done, that you’ll be taking on more debt, and pushing off grad school or finding a full time job. It is a bold move to move across the Atlantic to a foreign country. And it’s certainly a bold move to do all of this as last minute as we are.
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But how could we miss out on this opportunity? Personally, studying abroad was always on my radar, and when I ended up not being able to go for medical reasons, I was pretty bummed out. So having this second chance is surreal. It hasn’t totally set in yet that I’ll be moving to Spain this fall. It definitely hasn’t set in yet that I have to pay for another semester of college, one that I was never planning on or saving for – but it’s so exciting to think of all the amazing experiences I might be having in 6 months! I’ll be living a once in a lifetime experience, getting to meet all kinds of new people and explore so many new places, that it’s really worth the stress and scrambling I’m going through now. Every time I feel overwhelmed by the application process, or how fast I need to get things done, or trying to find scholarships, I just think about potentially getting to spend my birthday at Oktoberfest, or popping over to Greece for a long weekend. And it’s all made that much better by the fact that I get to do all of this with my incredible friend by my side.