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Image caption: Bamboo rafts in Yangshuo, China, 2018 | Photo courtesy of Jasmine Ioi

Studying abroad can be��daunting, full of firsts for anyone: first time on an airplane, first time leaving the country��or first time packing for more than a month away from home. For me, it was my first time leaving the bubble of my home, my family, my friends��and everything I’ve ever known for more than a couple weeks.

City of Ten Thousand Buddhas in Hong Kong, China, 2018 | Photo courtesy of Samantha Lauckner

A lot of American college students, at the very least, are “sent off” for a semester at a time; my big brother got a big send-off when he left for school in Indiana, but me leaving for �Ǹ�Թ� was a little different. I’ve more or less lived my entire life about an hour away from here—my big college “send-off” was my dad dropping me and all of my things off at Baker Hall��before he went to work for the day in Denver. As a result, I think my own experience of really, truly being physically separated from my home was put off until I left �Ǹ�Թ� to spend a semester in Shanghai, China.

I didn’t even know what kind of emotional impact to brace myself for until I was already there. The whirlwind of submitting program applications, applying for a student visa, booking plane tickets, finding housing, packing, flying to Los Angeles, flying from LA across the Pacific��and finally ending up on the ground in a wildly different place��had��a way of prioritizing itself over any feelings I may have had about it.

Those emotions might hit��you all��at once when you wake up at 3 a.m. local time due to jetlag. My most vivid memory of the first week��in Shanghai��is waking up in shock at my host family’s apartment thinking, “Oh no. I may have made a mistake.”

Don’t worry.��I didn’t feel that way for long. In fact, I survived long enough to make it back to the states and write a retrospective paper on the experience two years later. I had an amazing time, and, once the shock wore off, I even worked up the nerve to travel outside of the big city and see what else China had��to offer; the furthest afield I made it was the Giant Buddha statue in Leshan, just outside of Chengdu, for the Tomb Sweeping holiday weekend.��

My point in writing about the abject horror one may have at the realization you have left home for the other side of the world is that��the terror will be short-lived, and the experiences you carry away will last forever. I learned so much about myself and my capability to overcome fear of the unknown. I’m actually planning on returning to China next year for grad school.

None of the doors I now��have open to me would exist if I had not taken that initial leap of faith and stuck it out long enough to realize: Different isn’t the same as bad. Studying abroad may entail a myriad��of fears, but overcoming those fears��will open you to a world you never knew existed.

Author��Meredith Lewis graduated in May 2020 with a degree in molecular, cellular and developmental biology. She also worked in the Education Abroad office as a marketing intern.��