Jen's Essay

I never felt so many strange things at once in my life. I was nervous, scared, excited and I also felt the effects of sitting for eight hours in an uncomfortable chair next to a lady and her crying child. As I was walking out of the terminal, everything seemed to hit me at once. I was in a place that I had only seen before in magazines and on television, and I did not know a single person. At that point, I never would have guessed that this experience, in spite of the fear and anxiety, would turn out to be the most meaningful achievement of my life.

I started classes about a week later. At first I did not understand very well, and after about 15 minutes of listening intently, I would drift off and daydream in English because that would not give me a headache. It felt like it took forever for me to fully understand the professors without experiencing a splitting headache soon thereafter. I remember that every day after class during la siesta, I would make myself sleep. Sleep was my Extra-Strength Tylenol.

At about the same time that classes started, I moved into my new home. I did not understand much about the culture and combined with my mediocre language skills, having a conversation over lunch proved to be quite a challenge. I might as well have been deaf and mute, which I think would have been a better situation after the first time that I asked what exactly it was that I was eating. I also had a new roommate, who I found to be a little strange, and so I automatically figured that I would not like her much and we would have nothing in common. It felt as if someone were playing a cruel joke on me. My roommate seemed to be from another world, the food was even stranger and speaking the language still gave me the feeling that my head was going to explode.

However, after about two months of total immersion in this culture and language that was so strange to me, I began to feel like I belonged there. I was beginning to speak without first having to translate everything in my head before saying it, and I was making fewer humiliating mistakes, like the time I meant to say that my professor was short in height but instead I chose the wrong word and insulted his manhood. I was also becoming very accustomed to the way things were done, and found myself doing things this way without giving it a second thought. The way I acted, thought and spoke, basically everything about me was changing. I was becoming a different person but it was happening so covertly that I never truly knew I was changing so dramatically.

My roommate and I became good friends. I liked the food, even though I still figured it was better that I not ask exactly what it was, and I came to accept and adapt myself into the culture and language that seemed so otherworldly before. I eventually achieved fluency in the language, so much so that I would forget words in English when I talked with my parents, and I stopped having to retreat into my English-speaking dream world because I now only dreamed in a language not natively my own. I am today forever changed.

Although this seems to be only one experience, it is actually many small meaningful ones condensed into one. Study abroad in Sevilla, Spain, proved to be the most meaningful achievement of my life. After a year of studying the Spanish language and culture, I was not only bilingual, but I was also bicultural. This experience gave me such a more open and accepting way of thinking. It showed me that in my field of study, International Relations, a person can only be successful if s/he thinks with an open mind. I could not be the person I am today if I had not had this experience, and I also would not be so well suited for my field of study and my future career in this field. I now have an understanding of foreign cultures and peoples that I did not have before. My study abroad in Spain, although the hardest thing that I have ever done, has proved to be my most meaningful achievement because it has not only helped me greatly in my field of study but it will also help me to achieve my future goals. The world is only getting smaller, and it is so important that I can now understand it because I have experienced it rather than just looking at it in magazines and on television.