Sacrificing China for a “Real” College Experience

Not so long ago, when I thought about studying abroad, the question was never if I would go, but where. It would have been unthinkable not to go—traveling had always been what I enjoyed the most, and since even before my first big trip alone (to Shanghai at age 17), I had passed much of my time stateside planning my next adventure. Before last spring, I had never hesitated to take an opportunity to escape, but as the year drew to a close and I was finalizing my plans to spend the fall semester in China, I was having second thoughts.

The first time I began to doubt my decision was in a predeparture meeting last spring. As I sat there, I listened to students who had recently returned from studying abroad recall how their experiences put them in situations where they had to think on their feet and forced them to rely on themselves in ways they hadn’t thought they could. They explained how it was worth leaving the comfort of their community and settled life at Barnard to learn about themselves and to gain confidence and independence. As one girl recounted how she panicked when her ATM card didn’t work, I remembered waiting in line for hours to buy travelers’ checks with my credit card—I, too, couldn’t get cash my first week in Florence the summer before I started college. Yet, several trips later, that incident didn’t even make the cut for my greatest almost-fiascoes.

Another explained that small airlines are often unreliable. As someone who dragged her friends on a 72-plus hour train ride through former Yugoslavia because they were kicked off their plane from Athens to Milan, this was not news to me. I doubted that studying abroad could throw too much my way that I hadn’t seen traveling alone and with friends through China, Europe, and South America over the past four years. I knew what it was like to show up at a hostel at midnight and find that the bed you had reserved was essentially a double bed with a stranger, or to be woken up on a train at 3 a.m. by someone who is collecting your passport for border control in a country you didn’t know existed much less its name.

I began to question whether studying abroad was right for me, wavering back and forth until mid-August. It was not that I felt I had seen so much of the world that spending the semester abroad would have been insignificant—I still sit at my computer and tentatively plan hypothetical trips across the globe—or that I felt I had already gained everything studying abroad had to offer. What I was experiencing wasn’t a feeling of “been there, done that,” but more a sense of regret about what I hadn’t done.

Instead of their experiences abroad, it was the sense of these students’ lives at home that caught my attention. The “flight” side of my “fight-or-flight” instinct is highly developed, and roaming about is my natural inclination. In fact, I fled my native Massachusetts for Colorado for my first year of college and then fled right back to New York when I transferred to Barnard sophomore year. Independence and a sense of adventure were not things I felt I lacked.

What I hadn’t had—and what would really require pushing myself to broaden my horizons—was a “real” college experience and a chance to establish a life for myself in New York. I had only spent two semesters here, and was just beginning to get the continuity and stability—and reap their advantages—that these girls had already enjoyed and were now giving up for the freedom and independence they could use more of.

As I processed my options over and over to no avail, I took a new tactic. As with any decision, both sides had pros and cons that made it impossible to say whether either choice was definitively “better” for me than the other. But assuming that regardless of what I decided to do I might feel I had made the wrong choice in hindsight, which would I regret more: having passed up the opportunity to spend a semester abroad or having passed up the opportunity to feel like I received a complete college experience and really given Barnard a chance? College lasts only four years (for me, only three at Barnard)—even if you take classes later, you can never really be a college student again. China, and every other country in which I considered studying, would always be an option. Spending the fall semester here in New York would not only be a positive experience in itself—even if, just as with studying abroad, it would be challenging or unpleasant at times—but it would pave the way for the three semesters that would follow.

To be honest, I often second-guess my decision or momentarily wish I were in some exotic city. Right now, I’m planning to spend the summer studying in France and hope to spend some time abroad after graduation. But regardless of how I feel now, if I had gone abroad, I would always wonder what could have been if I had stayed and, if only for that reason, I am satisfied with my choice.

Many bill spending a semester abroad as a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. For me, as for many others, however, that opportunity is here. In the end, I chose to stay at Barnard for the very reasons many choose to leave—to push myself to do something I might be uncomfortable with, to broaden my horizons, and to make the most of the opportunities I had been given.

The author is a Barnard College junior majoring in American studies.