This past weekend, I took a trip to visit a college friend of mine who is studying at the University of Edinburgh for the semester. Though I’ve traveled a good bit within Spain over the last few months, it was my first time leaving the country since getting here in September, and it affected me more than I had expected. Not only was it strange to be back in an English-speaking environment (though sometimes the Scottish accents were so thick that it did truly feel as though we were speaking different languages), but it also made me think a lot about Spain and my experience here from a different perspective, and I ended up doing a lot more introspection than I had expected to do.
Spending time with my friend and other university students in both Edinburgh and St. Andrews reminded me just how many different academic systems there are all over the world. It made me think hard about all of the opportunities there are for academia and science. Given that I do not yet have a plan for what I will do after this year, it was a very important reminder that the world of research is a lot bigger than Spain and the U.S., and it made me excited about the prospect of exploring these other opportunities as well.
