Currently, I’m 4,800 miles away from my home in Washington state in a dorm room (with pretty much no window, but that’s another story) in a small suburb 30 minutes outside Central London for my first semester of college.
I originally wasn’t planning on studying abroad at all during my college years, let alone during my freshman fall, but my circumstances made it possible and highly recommended for me to do so. I barely gave the decision any thought, and booked my flight to London at the end of August.
I knew nobody in London and only a few people who had been before, and the majority of my friends were going to university near home. So according to one of my friends, I was pretty much “pulling a gutsy move” by leaving everything I knew behind at home in a suburb right outside Seattle that I called home for 18 years.
So why did I choose to leave?
I graduated from a small private school that I had attended since fifth grade, I grew up going to a Korean church since birth, and I held a big leadership position in Key Club which was one of the biggest high school organizations in my area. Interacting with people was inevitable and I found myself meeting people left and right. I rarely went a week without going to a social event related to one of these communities, surrounding myself with the same groups of people. I had been in such a familiar place for such a long time and I was craving nothing but to experience something new.
When I started to think about it more, I realized that I haven’t really met anyone new in a long time. Sure, I’ve met new people but they weren’t exactly… new. They were people I had seen before on social media, had mutual friends with, or somehow just knew of their existence prior to meeting them. It was usually a “nice to finally meet you; I’ve heard so much about you” instead of a simple “nice to meet you.”
Because of this, I rarely had conversations with my friends about what their favorite childhood memories were or what kind of sandwich they make for work every day or favorite artists or foods or animals; those were merely just things that came up randomly somewhere down the line during the friendship. The conversations started at our known commonalities and how we knew of each other beforehand instead of starting new. This new wasn’t really new.
There were always some sort of preconceived opinions or judgement when meeting someone new instead of a completely fresh start. I felt like every new person I was meeting already knew something about me and it prevented me from trying new things or acting in a way that was apparently “not like myself,” or the image of myself that was created through my involvement in the community. I felt trapped.
And so, I decided to take a break and have a fresh start. 4,800 miles away from a place where I felt like I couldn’t find anything new — both about myself and those around me. I wanted to experience the thrill and the curiosity of meeting new people and going to new places. For once, I didn’t want to be able to get around places without using Google Maps. I wanted to be able to get lost, in order to find something more.
And I’m loving every second of it here.
