Braving the study abroad abyss
Marlayna Soenneker
Here We Go Again: Letters From Exile
I am an idiot. Some people have hobbies, and I have that. A year and a half ago, I decided to apply to go abroad to Ireland. I filled out my application, sent it in and awaited word of my fate.
Now, you're probably wondering why this makes me an idiot. Study abroad is a great experience, you say. It broadens your horizons, makes you a better person and directly saves seals and other marine life threatened by oil spills. Small, starving children in parts of India will be immeasurably helped by your decision to go abroad.
If you don't go abroad, your life will be unfulfilled and unfulfilling as you search desperately for the rest of your time on this planet for something that will complete you the way study abroad would have. Your soul mate is somehow related to this experience, and if you don't go, you'll be forced into lifelong celibacy. You will be in a car crash or fed to lions if you stay in the States. So how can the decision to go abroad make you an idiot?
Allow me to continue my story. I was accepted in February, as one might expect with my stellar record and recommendations (which were definitely not created by my roommate and me late at night with stolen letterhead), and I'm cruising along fine. I'm going to Ireland next year. It sounds nice.
Fast-forward 11 months. It's last December now, and for the first time I begin to get a whiff of just how idiotic I really am. I look at my nice life at Notre Dame, which I love, and my friends, whom I also love. I have no desire whatsoever to go to a foreign country for the next five months.
"This will be a great new experience," everyone says. However, I hate new experiences. I get upset when I'm forced to eat at North when I was planning to go to South. I never really got over it when they switched the actress playing Aunt Vivian on "The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air."
"You'll meet new people," everyone says. I don't want to meet new people. I like the people I know — hence the reason that I am friends with them. If these "new" people are so great, then why am I not friends with them already?
The question must be asked: What kind of person decides to go to a foreign country for five months when she knows that she hates new places and new experiences? Obviously I, being that person, am an idiot. It seems clear.
The moment of leaving creeps closer. It's one day before departure and I am freaked out. I do not want to go to Ireland, particularly not tomorrow.
My best friend Matt gives me the best advice I've received all year. "Get on the plane," he whispers as he hugs me goodbye. "Get on the plane," he whispers as he closes the door.
I think about it. "Get on the plane."
All I have to do is get on the plane. I don't have to go to Ireland. I don't have to spend five months away from everything and everyone I know and love. I just have to get on two planes and that's it. So I do it.
I've been in Ireland now for five weeks. Yes, indeed, I did undertake that great adventure known as study abroad, or, if you are a junior, the abyss into which half the class disappears each semester. And, in all honesty, I don't think it was an idiotic decision.
I think if I had thought about going abroad as a real, I'm-actually-going-to-do-this decision a year and a half ago, I wouldn't have applied due to my loathing of all things new. But they say God has special angels assigned to look after the idiots of this world (well, maybe "they" don't say that, but I do), and I definitely count myself among those idiots. I think my angel managed to work around my stationary nature and delivered me into this Irish adventure.
So far the adventure has mostly consisted of "a," getting lost an average of once a day and "b," taking a lot of philosophy classes involving questions such as, "If I make a mistake in a piece of music, is it still a performance of that piece or is it a new piece of music?" and, "Do words have meaning? Does anything have meaning?"
The problem with these questions is that I don't care about them. In no way do their answers or lack thereof influence how I live my life. I spend at least half my time in these classes attempting to get beyond the fact that I would rather be eaten by crocodiles than study this stuff.
There are so many more interesting things to ponder, like where exactly I was when I got lost the second day and wandered so far away from my intended destination that the people I finally asked for directions hadn't ever heard of it. Or how to tell where north is when the sun never comes out.
Or whether or not I should be writing to the starving children in India who are somehow directly benefiting from my being here.
Marlayna Soenneker is a junior psychology and theology major. Her column appears every other Thursday. She can be reached at msoennek@nd.edu.
The views expressed in this column are those of the author and not necessarily those of The Observer.
All Viewpoint Stories for Thursday, February 7, 2002
