And Why No One Talks About It
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: studying abroad was one of the best experiences of my life. Like anyone else who spent a semester roaming around a new city, eating new food every day, and doing minimal schoolwork, I will tell you that spending a semester abroad was the best decision I ever made.
It was also the most exhausting thing I’ve ever done.
Let me be clear. I fully chose to study abroad, I chose to travel extensively, and I chose to spend my days and nights out and about. Doing so brought me some of my best friends, who I will cherish for the rest of my life. But I also barely slept, was sick for about a month out of my four months abroad, and felt utterly drained by the time I was booking my flight home.
I am an extroverted introvert, and while I love to meet new people and spend time with my friends, I find that an excess of socialization without alone time really takes it out of me. And although the idea is to tailor your study abroad experience to fit your needs and meet your expectations, I felt a constant pressure to “embrace being abroad”. Whether this was clubbing on a Wednesday night when I had class at 9:00 AM the next morning or getting up at 4:00 AM to catch a flight to some new country, I felt that taking time to myself and resting was a betrayal of the study abroad experience.
Spending a few months abroad as a student is one of the most unique and irreplicable things a person can do. Never again in my life will I live in another country for a short period with a couple of dozen other students and the opportunity to travel every week. Never again will I be 20 years old and old enough to live on my own in a new country yet young enough to go out three nights a week and eat whatever I want. I felt this overwhelming guilt every time I chose to stay in or spend a weekend relaxing.
While I don’t think this experience has a specific name, I have chosen to call it “experience guilt.” It’s the feeling of knowing I am living this incredible experience and yet being completely out of energy to fully embrace it. As an introvert, studying abroad was one of the most formative experiences of my life because it taught me to push through feelings of social exhaustion and the guilt that came with it. If I had to go back, I would always choose to study abroad; I learned so much about myself in those four months. But, I would love to give the pre-abroad me a hug and a gentle reminder that it’s okay to sit some things out. It’s okay to spend the weekend in your host city, wandering around new coffee shops. It’s okay to spend a night in with your new best friends and watch a movie. It’s okay to not give in to the pressure to travel, eat, drink, and socialize constantly. It sounds cliche, but at the end of the day, studying abroad is about finding yourself, not losing yourself. Take some time to rest.