After three short months in Edinburgh, it’s time for me to say goodbye and fly home to Chicago. My experiences abroad have taught me valuable life lessons, and now I am excited to share a few of these lessons with you. Before I say my goodbyes, here are three things I’ve learned from my time abroad:
1. Trust Yourself.
The night before my first study abroad, I couldn’t sleep. I was thinking about everything that could possibly go wrong the next day: forgetting my passport, losing my phone, getting lost on the way from the airport to my accomodation and so on. While it’s good to prepare for the worst, it’s also important to trust yourself. If I had let my fears get the best of me, then I would have lost out on all of the opportunities that studying abroad has to offer.
So, once I packed my passport, secured my phone and printed out directions from the airport to my accommodation, I had to trust that I was ready for the first day of my journey abroad. Looking back, I know now that I was overprepared! All of my what if scenarios prepped me for the worst, but eventually, trusting myself was the most important thing I needed to do.
2. Appreciate Cultural Differences.
