BRIGHTON, England — Traveling abroad for a vacation is one thing, but studying abroad is a completely different experience. My recent study abroad trip to Brighton, England, has taught me many things, good and bad.
When you go on vacation, you only stay at a certain place for a short period of time, so you are not able to fully experience that place from a local’s point of view.
For starter, the trip itself was a cultural shock because this was my first time studying abroad. From the way people carry themselves to how they carry on with their day, I realized people are very different from Southeast Texans.
Compared to the United States, most everyone I’ve come across has a much more laid back attitude. They’re not in a rush to go anywhere or see anyone. At almost every coffee shop, you can see people relaxing with a cup of tea in the middle of the day as if they don’t have a care in the world.
Whereas back home, people are constantly on the run. You don’t often find people enjoying a cup of tea in the middle of the day. You can either find them at work or at home sick.
In England’s restaurants, tips are included in the bill, and wait staff gets paid an hourly wage. Therefore, you don’t see them rushing their customers out the door like they do in the U.S. Often, customers sit around and enjoy their meals leisurely because their waiter are not constantly breathing down their necks.
At first, I was really annoyed because of how slow-paced the service was. When I go to restaurants, my No. 1 goal is to eat and get out of there as fast as I can. Of course, I do enjoy my food, but I don’t like having two hours of my day wasted by sitting in a restaurant waiting for my check to come after I eat.
Over time, however, I got used to it, and it made me aware of a lot of things like mindful eating, conversing with another human being instead of being on my phone, appreciating being in the moment, and acknowledging the fact that I’m alive and taking advantage of that one single thought instead of being constantly on the move.
I also had to adjust to personal responsibility and time management. Of course, studying abroad and visiting abroad are two different things. It’s not like going on a vacation where you can just fully enjoy yourself the whole time you’re there. At times, I forgot that, and I found myself enjoying the trip a bit too much, often pushing aside my academic responsibility.
I wasn’t alone because my classmates were doing the same thing. Despite our procrastination, we were responsible enough to get our work done while still enjoying ourselves. We’re responsible procrastinators, I’d say.
Our professor, Andy Coughlan, is the type of professor who let us know from the beginning what he expected of, without spoon-feeding us through the journey. He gave us the freedom and space to do our own thing, but I think he gave us too much freedom at times.
For instance, on the first day we arrived, our group got split in half trying to get to catch a train to our final destination because we couldn’t find the platform we were supposed to be at. The only person we would look to would be our professor, but he was nowhere to be seen. My classmates and I were panicking because we had only a few minutes to find the right platform, or we would miss our train and end up catching the one after that.
There we were in a foreign country, jet-lagged to the extreme and looking like lost lambs trying to find its mommy. To be fair, we did ask for help but was met with an unfriendly train assistant.
However, we did manage to find the right platform, with my professor in the most laid-back attitude while we were huffing and puffing scared out of our mind fearing that we might’ve been left behind. The amount of trust he puts in us is beyond me, but that’s how we learn. I wouldn’t want it any other way.
Speaking of transportation, another thing I had to get used to was utilizing the bus system as a mean of transportation. This is probably the hardest thing that I encountered on my trip abroad. It was confusing, and my group and I got lost more times than I can count. This also ties back to time management.
Back home, I could just hop in my car and go anywhere, anytime I wanted to. I could also easily calculate and manage the distance to get to and from a place while maintaining punctuality. However, it’s a completely different thing managing time with the bus system.
A big part of it was that I wasn’t used to it, but another part was calculating the distance walking to the bus stop, waiting for the bus, the bus ride itself and then more walking to get to the destination. This not only taught me time management, but I grew to appreciate how easy it is for me to just walk two steps into the garage and my car would be there.
All in all, it’s really the little things I found here and there while studying abroad that made me more aware of myself and my surrounding. This definitely opened up not just my perspective on things, but also the way that I think.
Studying abroad is such a beneficial thing that students should take advantage of the opportunity. It teaches you cultural competency, self-awareness, time management, personal responsibly and more. This is to only name a few.
The only thing I regret is that I didn’t do this more often in my college career. I would retake this trip again in a heartbeat.
V Eats 