Year Abroad: A Month at UConn

Watching the cursor turn on and off at the screen of my laptop In my room. It feels like I am a world away and yet I have found my feet. These walls. The buildings. They have become a part of me. I know when it is time to leave I will have made my mark. As the weather gets colder, the days shorter, the work hours longer I reflect on what has been a month that has brought so much change.

This experience has been one of the hardest things I have ever done and has forced me to grow far more than I would have thought.

When I first walked into my small, shadowed room in my East Campus Residence Hall I did not know quite what to expect. After five weeks at the University of Connecticut I still don’t know if my opinion is completely settled. What I do know is that this experience has been one of the hardest things I have ever done and has forced me to grow far more than I would have thought.

I remember hugging my dad before boarding the plane. His hand waving me goodbye as I knew I would not be seeing him again for another four months. It feels like I have already been here that long. The most marked transition is one from spectating around the American culture to becoming a part of the fabric at the University.

I have found meaningful friendships in unexpected places and traded stories with people from all over the world.

Joining the boxing team and being involved with the student media organisations has allowed me to meet students here at their level and in the same breath share a novel perspective on the US cultures and customs that make this place the way it is. I have found meaningful friendships in unexpected places and traded stories with people from all over the world.

Though the University is set upon several acres of quiet and relatively benign farmland in Northern Connecticut, it is constantly alive with those seeking to pursue and fulfil their passions. The journalism department, which I have adopted as my major for the year, offers world class teaching with a swathe of highly intelligent minds, all who have full careers in the field behind them.

I realised that these people are now an inherent fixture of my year.

Studying how to work a camera, take publication ready photographs, write professional news pieces and the media laws within the country has cultivated a far greater and deeper understanding of the industry for me, that I will be sure to equip after my time at university. It has also made me more greatly aware of all the nuance and work that goes into becoming a professional journalist as well as the continued striving and work ethic once you make it into the field.

Beyond study, sports teams are a community that you can rely on here. Standing in front of a modest bonfire last weekend with several others from the boxing team, I realised that these people are now an inherent fixture of my year. With sporting competition at the university, more than having a deep connection to your chosen sport they also prioritise you connecting with each other.

The experience has been different to what I had imagined in ways I could not have comprehended. Every teaching room, hall, street and building you enter is full of life. All my professors have welcomed me with the most open of arms. My teammates, sports coach and course mates all feel like extensions of myself.

The reality that we are all firmly embarking on new chapters in our lives weighs heavily as I write this.

And yet, when I settle in my room in an older Georgian style brick built residence hall in a small, quaint, pocket of the campus I sometimes reflect on what has been left behind. Most of my closest friends are either scattered across the world or graduating in a matter of months. The reality that we are all firmly embarking on new chapters in our lives weighs heavily as I write this. I realise that for all the changes I am undergoing I cannot be there to see the respective changes in my friends’ lives.

I came to the University of Connecticut with a world of different expectations, broad ranging in their level of realism. What I came to find was that nothing quite prepares you for the total immersion of leaving your old life behind and embracing a new life and a new culture that is completely alien. The closure on the chapter of my university life, and my life more broadly, where all my friends and family lived in the same areas, is sometimes a little hard to reconcile.

This is an indescribably exciting and important crossroads in the life of not just myself but also those of everyone around me.

However, I recognise in life sometimes things have to change to make way for new paths to take root. I know that whilst potentially difficult, this is an indescribably exciting and important crossroads in the life of not just myself but also those of everyone around me. Although change is not easy it is sometimes just the thing we need to put our lives in perspective.