Hola, everybody!
I know what you’re thinking…long time, no see. For those of you who don’t know why I have been gone, it was because I spent the last four months studying abroad in Spain. But now that I am back home and back in front of my computer, boy do I have some stories and experiences to share with you. And for my first article since my return to The Odyssey, I would like to share with you all just exactly what I was doing and what lessons or skills I learned during my brief hiatus in Spain.
The first, most obvious skills that I learned involved the Spanish language. After taking the classes that I did and spending so much time with actual Spaniards, I improved my pronunciation skills and also gained a better grasp of Spanish grammar rules. To spare you all the details of this one, I’ll just skip right ahead to the important lesson regarding my language skills that I received from my intercambio. Roughly translated, he told me that I needed to feel unashamed and unafraid to make mistakes when I’m communicating in Spanish because that is how I will learn and get better. As much as this kills the perfectionist in me, I have been trying to follow this advice since that day. And I would encourage any one of you out there learning a foreign language to do the same. Don’t be afraid of making a mistake or looking stupid when trying to communicate in another language—the person you’re talking to will most likely understand and try to help you learn from your mistake so you can grow in your language skills.
Enough about the language, though; now I’d like to get to the more personal lessons I learned while abroad. The first and less revelationary lesson that I, and many other who studied in Spain I’m sure, learned was the importance of taking the time to slow down, relax, and enjoy life a little. Contrary to what our society would have you believe, it doesn’t have to be go, go, go all of the time. Yes it is important to get things done and to do those things in a reasonable time frame, but we don’t always have to be doing something or be in a hurry. It was so different being in Spain in this regard because the people there were so much more relaxed and laid-back and cared so much less about adhering to strict schedules and deadlines. You could tell this by something as simple as how they walked around the city. When Spaniards walked somewhere, they did so (very) slowly and almost like they had no real purpose or destination. They just strolled along at their own pace, not caring whether they arrive a few minutes late to where they were going. As frustrating as this could be at times, I actually really admired it. Life is too short to spend all of our time working or being on the go. Sometimes we just need to slow down and learn to enjoy ourselves and all of the great things that life has to offer.
This brings me to my next point. Another lesson I learned that helps in enjoying life more is that I (or we) need to start caring less about what other people think of me and learn to accept myself for who I am, no matter how awkward or weird that may be. I struggled with this a lot while I was over there, almost more than I do back home. You see, the problem is that I am often torn between not caring what other people think about me and just not wanting to be lonely. I worried (worry) so much sometimes that if I showed my true self to other people that they would think I was weird and/or want nothing to do with me. And when you’re in a foreign country by yourself, you want to find friends so that you have people to spend time with, confide in, and be comforted by if need be.
That being said, having friends for the sake of having friends is never worth pretending to be something you’re not or doing/going along with things you’re not comfortable with just to not feel left out. I had to come to terms with this during my time abroad. No matter how much I wanted to make connections with the people I met there, I couldn’t compromise who I was to do that. So if that meant staying in our house alone some nights doing who knows what while my roommates went out drinking and clubbing, then I just had to accept that that was who I was and not care what other people thought of me for it.
The last and arguably most important lesson I learned while studying abroad was the importance of having people close to you to share your life with. As you read in the last paragraph, I had a hard time making lasting connections with the people I met there. Sure, we would talk and laugh and what not while we were together, but I was rarely ever invited to hang out beyond that, especially toward the middle-end part of my trip. This made for some very lonely and sad nights sometimes. Here I was with all of these things to talk about and share with someone only to find myself without anyone to share with, in person at least. The worst case example of this was when I went on my weekend trip to London alone. I had done and seen all of these exciting things, including Harry Potter, but I couldn’t talk about them with anyone while I was there. In fact, I had so much I wanted to tell people that I remember just unloading nearly everything on my roommates the night I got back.
Now, if I had someone to go on my London trip with me, things definitely would’ve been different. But unfortunately I didn’t and I think I know the main reason why. In order to form the lasting connections and friendships with people that we as human beings crave, we need to be more open and vulnerable and put ourselves out there—three things that I am not very good at. I have always been so afraid of opening up and letting people in because I am so worried that they will either reject me or hurt me. Because of this, I never really give people the chance to get to know the real me. And this is exactly what happened when I was in Spain. Studying abroad was supposed to be this great chance to meet new and exciting people and make lasting friendships, and I only partly succeeded at the former.
As much as that lesson may have hurt though, this was one that I, and the many others like me, needed to learn. If I ever want to get where I want to be in life, I will need to take all of these lessons I learned while abroad and apply them to my life back home here. And if I had never taken the huge step forward that was studying abroad, I may have never learned these lessons. That is why I encourage those of you who still have the opportunity to study abroad, or even just travel to these other countries, to do so and see what lessons you can learn too.
