I do not like studying abroad.
In all seriousness, I really don’t like it. Don’t get me wrong – I love being abroad. But I hate studying here. University life is so much different here, and in my opinion not in a good way. And that’s exactly it – university life. Back home, university is a way of life. It’s an all-inclusive, distinct way of life from all other people, employees, secondary school students, retirees, stay at home parents, everybody. It’s a way of life that I really like. It’s working hard, playing hard, and living in a community with a bunch of other people in the same mode as you. I think I do more and get more out of every day during the normal school year than any other time, and that’s cool. Shift life up a few gears.
It’s not the same here. University is a place to go to class and basically nothing more. It’s exceedingly rare for people to move far from home to go to college. Almost everybody lives at home or just nearby, and there is no such thing as campus housing. There are no large university functions or events, no sports, no plays or art, or anything else that makes student life so worth it back home. People go to college with all their friends. University here really is just 13th grade, minus the penguin uniforms.
It makes it all the more difficult for us fools to get engaged in the university. Nobody is new here, except us, and I can’t go to a hockey game or culture night or join student groups to get involved. Maybe I’m just frustrated and getting kind of cynical towards the whole thing. Maybe I’m just in a bad mood because my alarm didn’t go off and I missed class today, which only runs once per week (all classes are only held once per week, for two and a half hours). And since we don’t have textbooks or online material and since I don’t know anybody in the class, since it’s just lecture, I can’t catch up. Or, maybe I’m just stressed out because I have entirely way too much free time and nothing good to do with it. Yeah, that’s definitely it.
I can’t imagine what it must be like for a Chilean student to study abroad in the US. It would absolutely blow you away. First off, you’re not living anywhere near your family anymore. That just doesn’t happen here. People live with their moms and dads until their 30’s. 30-something years old! What were you doing when you were 30? When I told my host family that most American kids are dying to leave the house when they turn 18 (and don’t usually come home), they couldn’t believe it. And when people do finally get married and move out, they don’t ever move far. My neighborhood consists of my family. In some ways, that’s cool. We have family barbecues on the weekends, and people are always over visiting. Plus, when 16 year old girls have kids (I know several of them), the poor kids aren’t totally hosed over. But in some ways, that all really sucks. My February month Culture and Conversation teacher (Chilean to the bone) summed it up: ‘People really never leave here. They get married, their parents die, and then they inherit the house. That’s their life.’ Family goes even further than that though. Family are your friends, family are your colleagues, family are your partners. When you meet somebody and say ‘hi my name’s pat’, they ask, ‘well pat who?’ What do you care? Call me pat! They also like to ask what school you go to – public or private – and other crap to size up your status in society. Your family and your birth can be an anchor tied to your leg. Seriously, I never thought I could feel so flippin’ hardcore American.
I suppose this is why you study abroad in the first place, right? To get soaked in a different juice for a while. To get frustrated with the new culture, or with your own American-ness, or both at the same time. To feel excluded, like a true outsider, where the old rules don’t apply anymore. There’s a difference between travelling here and being here. If I’m travelling and I don’t like a place, I move on. I can be selective about what parts of the culture I choose to experience. No wonder it’s so much fun. You can skim the cream and eat that up all day long. Instead, I’m here, whole enchilada, and I have to find a way to deal with that.
Is this some kind of late-arrival culture shock? I don’t know. Maybe I just woke up on the wrong side of the bed this morning. But when I wake up tomorrow, when I get up for class, I’ll still realize the same facts of life right now – I have one true Chilean friend (and it was a gimme – set up through the study abroad program), I know nobody in my classes, the people calling me to go hang out will call in English, and basically I’m doing a pretty miserable job of studying abroad and I don’t know how to fix that.
Yet it’s still fun more often than not. How often do you get to have nighttime rooftop grill-outs, looking over the ocean and having the best 3 dollar steak and 2 dollar wine you’ve ever tasted? How often do you get to go out on a Monday, because you have no class Tuesday and nothing to do regardless? How often do you have a grand total of 30 minutes of homework per week? Since when did the beach become a part of every single day? Really, this is all a glorified, 6 month extended spring break. And it’s fun. I just wonder whether there’s supposed to be more to it than that. What should my priorities be? Should I try to just relax and enjoy as much as possible, for 6 straight months? I’m not actually sure I’m capable of doing that. Or should I try as hard as possible to integrate, change myself, and learn? If I threw everything out the window, really put myself out there, tried to become as comfortable as possible with being extremely uncomfortable, would that work? What exactly would that look like? Would it be worth it?
I nailed the trip to Argentina on the head. I got about as much out of that trip as I possibly could have, without knowing beforehand what exactly that was supposed to be. Well, here’s Chile, and once again I don’t know what’s supposed to happen here. I just hope when it’s said and done, I can say the same thing once again.
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