Category Stories: Wellness, Health, and Safety
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Abroad: This is For Me, Not For You…
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Being First Gen My background as a first-generation student has been crucial in determining the experiences I’ve had growing up. For me, being first-generation means coming from a low-income family with immigrant parents; well meaning but unable to give advice on how to navigate the U.S. education system and careers that follow after. It also…
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How Study Abroad Helped my Mental Health and Emotions
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Mental Health Back Home My emotions are something I’ve struggled with a lot in the past. In particular, I feel this at my home university because at Colby I feel stressed and sometimes lonely. Being so far away from home at Colby is hard. I always miss my family and the comfort of Chicago: of…
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Homesickness Abroad: How To Get Over the First Month Slump
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Homesickness Abroad: How To Get Over the First Month Slump Part One: The Slump Ask just about anyone who studied abroad and they will all likely tell you the same thing: it was life changing. Ask me? I will without a doubt agree. But if you would have asked me, “How do you like study…
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How To Overcome First Generation Hurdles While Studying Abroad
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Let me start by saying that I am a first-generation college student who grew up in poverty. I have also struggled with depression and anxiety for most of my life. At one point, I started failing classes and had to drop out of college for a year and a half. Studying abroad has always been…
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Safe Travels for My Abroad Ladies!
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Before My Study Abroad Several foreboding warnings were handed delicately within conversation to me before departing for my semester at the University of Glasgow, from both my family and friends. As a woman planning to travel in foreign countries besides Scotland during my time abroad, most people warned me with wariness to be aware of my surroundings while…
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Some Thoughts on the Unexpected Benefits of Traveling Solo
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Traveling During the six-week Easter break afforded to me at Oxford, I accomplished some travel. This was about a month and a half’s worth, most of it alone, as I took trains around the South of France and Alpine Austria, did a pilgrimage to Lourdes, and spent a frankly unnecessarily long time in Bordeaux. There’s something to…
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Women Traveling Abroad
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Many students who study abroad try to make the most of their experience by traveling to different places throughout the course of the semester. In fact, as the end of our time abroad draws closer and closer, I cannot name a single exchange student I met who hasn’t traveled at least once throughout the past…
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How to Reset While Abroad
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As I passed the two-month marker of my semester abroad, I entered a rut: one that can only be described as complacency. I had become complacent with a schedule that did not leave me excited to leave my bed. I went to classes and paid very minimal attention, if any. I just went through the…
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Tips for Navigating Study Abroad as an Introvert
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When I told people I was planning on studying abroad, one of the things I heard most often was, “You’re going to have an amazing time! You’ll make friends for life!” Although it was nice to hear people say this, I also found myself feeling stressed out about the prospect of making “friends for life”…
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What are Seasons? I’m From Hawaii!
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The first time I experienced seasons, I was 17 years old. My whole life up until my freshman year of college was spent on a tropical island where “cold” was 70 degrees Fahrenheit, leaves stayed attached to branches, and the sun never set earlier than 6PM. Nearly every day was a beach day. I started…
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