Erasmus blues

[dropcap]W[/dropcap]hile a year abroad can be one of the best things you’ll ever do, that doesn’t stop it from being terrifying. Alice Dodden explains.

If I were to say the reality of spending a year abroad only hit me three weeks ago, you’d probably laugh at me. Yet here I am, having known about it for three years now, and I’m only just realising the enormity of what’s about to happen.

The past few months have been a barrage of forms, applications, deadlines and presentations, all mixed together with hundreds of emails with the British Council and their French counterparts. It has taken all of this to realise just how much there is to do before I leave. I’d given no thought to any of this until it was too late – it was so easy to tell people I would be going abroad without understanding the reality behind the words.

Spending a year abroad is more than just living the same life in a different place for a little while. It’s a process of assuming a whole new cultural and personal identity, a period of time where you can remake yourself into the person you’ve always wanted to be.

Now here I am, trying to plan a life for myself in Saint Quentin, a town about the size of Leamington near the border with Belgium in northern France. I’ve found out everything I can about the town, I’ve been to visit my accommodation for the year, I’ve (most importantly) tried out the wine, and I can honestly say I love the place. All very well until I actually imagined myself living there permanently. Then it got a bit trickier.

Moving abroad is going to be the hardest thing I will ever do. For this reason, in October I was a phone call away from calling the whole thing off and changing from a joint to single honours history course. In a move I’m sure I’ll be grateful for, I put the phone down and told myself to be brave. Making my peace with this alarming prospect was a necessary evil, but at this stage, bravery isn’t doing anything to cure my anxiety. My imminent departure is now an accepted fact, and I’m doing all I can to plan for it. It’s an expensive and time consuming process, but despite this I don’t actually feel any better prepared for what I’ll find when I arrive. The next seven months remain an unknown quantity under the heading of ‘best year of my life’, and quite frankly the total blank that draws in my mind terrifies me.

The next seven months remain an unknown quantity under the heading of ‘best year of my life’

Spending a year abroad is more than just living the same life in a different place for a little while. It’s a process of assuming a whole new cultural and personal identity, a period of time where you can remake yourself into the person you’ve always wanted to be. The world is about to open up to me – my contracted hours (all twelve of them) will give me a lot of freedom to get my teeth into France, and find out what it means to be French. But that’s not the part that scares me. I’m leaving behind everything I know and love; my friends at Warwick and at home, my family; in reality I’m leaving behind normality to throw myself into something completely alien. I’m wilfully removing myself from everything that has made my university experience so memorable and enjoyable. I can hear some of you snorting in disbelief at me, saying you’d swap places with me in a heartbeat, and I know that I’ll love it when I’m actually out there experiencing it all. But for now, when I compare the comfort of the Warwick bubble to the big, wide world full of faceless people who I have to work with and teach, my anxiety levels soar. And the worst part is that I can’t do anything about that until it’s too late; sooner or later I’m going to have to take the plunge.