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Living with Social Anxiety Abroad
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I always knew that I was an introverted person, but I did not know that I have social anxiety until the second year of college. I realized that had felt stressed and anxious in almost all social settings: from a theater rehearsal room, a Friday night party, or the cafeteria resounded with American small talks,…
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How Does a First-Generation, Non-Traditional Student Study Abroad?
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My Story My parents did not attend college, and I was not really expected to attend either. My family also does not travel, and international travel was always a far-off fantasy for me. I never really expected for it to be possible for me to go anywhere; it was just something I daydreamed about from…
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Why I Decided to Study Abroad in Cuba Despite the Travel Warning
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When I first considered my options for study abroad programs, the idea of living in Havana, Cuba for a semester was exciting but slightly nerve-racking. Would the already stressful process of studying abroad be harder with less access to communication back home? How would the tense and constantly-shifting relationship between the United States and Cuba…
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5 Tips to Stay Connected to Home While Abroad
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Talking about all the exploration, learning and immersion that a study abroad experience can bring, it’s easy to forget the reality that it also involves being away from friends, family and home for months. In one way or another, every student will experience homesickness and loneliness – but that doesn’t have to inhibit all the…
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Public Transportation: Your New Best Friend in Ireland and Beyond
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Intercity buses: Crowded, right? And noisy, and dirty, and downright strange sometimes?Wrong.Dear hesitant American student:I’ve been where you are, I promise: anxiously looking up tour buses, figuring out where you can go from your host city, and weighing it against costs of groceries and mail home, and everything else. I know it’s easy to see…
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4 Common Myths About STEM Students Studying Abroad
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As you probably know, STEM students continue to be the minority of those who study abroad in their undergraduate study. Many STEM students either think it is impossible for them to study abroad or feel like it’d be a burden. Let me assure you: those conceptions are not necessarily true. Myth #1: It Doesn’t Fit…
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Embracing Discomfort: Studying the Arts in London as an East Asian
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“There will never be a place where I can fully belong.”This is what I wrote down on Facebook, right before the plane took off to London, the city where I would stay for the next six months. All kinds of anxieties started to upsurge into my body, and one of them is the fear of…
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What the Food in Buenos Aires Taught Me About My Latina Identity
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As a person of Mexican descent living in the United States, I also identify as being a Latina. To be quite honest, I didn’t even know that the term “Latino” or “Latina” existed until about the third grade when I started taking standardized tests that asked me to bubble in my ethnic identity. At the…
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Three Continents, One Educational Journey
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After adjusting to a new city and language twice in the past six years, Edith Tea is familiar with the challenges of finding herself in a new living situation.“It definitely felt like when I first arrived,” Tea said, comparing her experience first moving to the United States to her study abroad journey with the IFSA Chilean…
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Why I Chose to Study a Full Year Abroad in London
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While many students are beginning to reflect back on their fall study abroad experiences, I am only halfway through my full year abroad. Sometimes I worry about what I will be missing at home in the spring, and I definitely miss my friends and family back home in the United States, but I think that…