Can Travel Help You Get “Unstuck?”
Backpacking & Trekking, Departments, Destinations, Dispatches from the Road, Europe, Italy, Leaving & Coming Home, Lost Girl of the Week, Studying Abroad, Travel Philosophy — By Patty H on April 6, 2009 at 8:00 am
By Patty HodappOne day I was sitting around with a bunch of girlfriends eating dinner in the dining hall at Syracuse University. We started talking about memories from freshman year, reminiscing on how new and exciting college used to be-back then the work load was half as heavy and our bank accounts were twice as full. Things were great.
Fresh out of high school, I came halfway across the country from Minnesota to New York chasing my dream of becoming a journalist. My friends and I embraced the exhilarating freedom of being “adults” and we grew up quickly, becoming fast friends. I did everything I could to keep up with the fast pace of college life, and before I knew it, freshman year was over.
Summer whizzed by and sophomore year started, but this time, everything felt so different. I flew back to school with one suitcase and unpacked my stuff from summer storage. I remember strutting into my dorm with a big grin on my face-we were seasoned college kids now. I knew the ropes and I was going to have a sweet year.
Then classes kicked in, and I was swamped. I frantically racked my brain-had I always had this much work? How was I supposed to write two papers in one night? Why was the library café becoming my second home? THIS WAS NOT HOW I REMEMBERED COLLEGE.
So a few months in, exhausted and downtrodden, my girlfriends and I decided that as sophomores we all felt, well, pretty much stuck. We were all weighed down with the in-between, “caught in the middle” feeling. Yikes.
I needed to take action fast before I melted away in the mundane blur my life had become. I wanted a future goal or short term plan that would keep me motivated. Also, the familiar ache of the travel bug was quickly becoming a gnawing hunger with every month that I stayed put in Syracuse. So I put two and two together and decided it was time to get unstuck.
I started looking into options and talking to SU Abroad counselors who gave me lots of great information on their summer programs. With my crazy schedule, a summer program was perfect timing, and I could take fine arts classes in Florence that would count toward my second major. Then I met the Lost Girls and they cleared up my internship concern. So it was basically meant to be! I fly out in T-minus two months and I am THRILLED. But making the decision to go and getting accepted to the program was just one tiny piece of the puzzle-I had the whole list of things to organize: a passport, a visa, my wardrobe, you name it!
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