Goodbyes all around: Achieving the impossible dream of studying abroad

April 29th - In the air, somewhere over the Atlantic Ocean.

I've dreamt of studying abroad since I was in my early teens, after watching endless travel TV shows. To understand my sentimentality I feel it necessary to share the story of my dream:

During high school, when I wanted to study veterinary science, I recall presenting my parents with a summer program in Thailand for pre-vet, but I was met with a reasonable no. Later, I applied to a school outside the state; I wanted to study in California. If the furthest I can go is only within the country, then I'll do that. I applied, got accepted, and was persuaded to stay in Texas. In late 2019, I gathered information for a spring semester in Paris, but due to the COVID pandemic, it was canceled. I attended law school for one semester. The summer after I left, I was supposed to go to Innsbruck, Austria, for a summer semester. Still, because I only stayed in law school for one semester, I was given my money back and had to cancel flights, accommodations, and just about everything. I was out of law school in January of 2024. I waited a few months before deciding what I wanted to do: study literature. I took one semester of undergraduate classes on a conditional admission and was officially enrolled in the Master's program in the fall of 2025. It is not past me to realize just how impossible it was to find my place, even more so to finally achieve my dream of studying abroad. Thinking about everything that had to happen in life just to arrive in Urbino for these three months, I'd go through all the confusion and pain all over again. 

I arrived at the Rome airport with the full confidence that even if I didn't know anyone, I'd be happy just to be there, even if it was alone. I enjoy being alone, so I'll be fine. Never did I think I'd meet such a kind, receptive, empathetic, fun group. The connections made in this trip feel cosmic, or perhaps that's the impossibility of my situation talking. Even more so, I never expected to find a love for a new study, linguistics, and that it was what I had been looking for my whole life. I had the idea in my head of something I wanted to study, thinking it was aimless or nonexistent, and yet that, too, has found me on this trip. 

There is a song by the band Wallows called "Do Not Wait." It is a conversation with a younger self. First, it goes through a list of expectations a younger self has and pairs them with the reality the current self is living. Tjhe scond chorus says, "All the times you feel like everything, when nothing really happens at all" has been such a comfort for me. Things like feeling lost in your 20s (as one does), failure, changes of plans, grief, panic, all of it feels monumental-- and it is. Though, when paired with what feels like the mantra "do not wait, I'll be there" feels like coming back to reality and realizing that in retrospect, everything will be okay. The song then plays what sounds like a heartbeat speeding up, until there is just silence, followed by a guitar cry. Two voices work together, the past self listing things that felt terrifying, and the current self saying "nothing happens" over and over. However, at some point, the past self and the current self become one, and they list the positive outcomes of the aforementioned problems. This song has changed everything for me, and it has been a companion through this trip as well. I couldn't even imagine the plane landing in Rome days before leaving. I was terrified, and yet now I write this on my flight back, hours away from landing at home. 

I am one to get sentimental, I can't even deny it, and I feel as though privying others from seeing that emotion is both inauthentic and me hiding just how much I've grown to appreciate their presence. One of the last few times we had foggy skies in Urbino I wrote a small love note to the city in Spanish, “Qué bonito poder verte bajo el mismo cielo que nos presentó, cuando no podía ni imaginarte entre las nubes. Ahora eres parte de cada noche y cada día; te veo como si estuviera dentro de un sueño al que sé que querré volver por mucho tiempo.” "How beautiful to see you under the same sky that introduced us to each other, when I couldn't even imagine you underneath the fog and clouds. Now you're part of every night and day; I see you as if I were in a dream I know I'll want to return to for a long time." This semester has been everything, healing in every sense of the way. I called my mom at 4am an hour before the bus to Rome picked us up to head back to the US. I asked her, "what do I do now that I've completed this dream? This over 15-year-old dream?" She said, “you find a new one." I suppose we will see what the next one will be, but for now, I think I'll ride the high of completing this one a while longer.