At the beginning of my junior year, I was both anxious and excited to start the college process. For as long as I could remember, I had anticipated applying to college. However, compressing my identity into a word-limited college supplemental felt extremely daunting.
At the beginning of high school, I felt that I was leading a mundane life where everything revolved around school and achieving top grades. My family friend had mentioned her study abroad experience through School Year Abroad (SYA), and she said the experience taught her about the world outside of GDS and helped her figure out her interests. My identity had previously revolved around how well I performed in school. I wanted to do SYA because I thought that it would help me discover more about who I was beyond academics. I decided that I was going to spend the second semester of my junior year in Italy.
I remember feeling an array of emotions leading up to my departure. I was mainly afraid of change—the fear of things changing both at home and within my friendships. I was also afraid that once I arrived in Italy, I would not fit in with my classmates or host family.
Before I left for Italy, I prioritized getting good grades over everything else in my life. Italians live a slower-paced life than Americans; they make sure to carve out time for themselves, friends and family despite how busy they are. I remember my first week in Italy, when my host sister asked me to watch The Notebook with her on a school night. The idea of doing anything besides homework on a school night never seemed feasible to me. However, I was too scared to object to her request, so we watched the movie that night. We ended up making sure always to do something together after school even though I was not used to doing that. My host sister taught me the importance of not letting yourself be fully consumed by school and maintaining a healthy balance between schoolwork and friendships.
When I returned, things inevitably did change at home. I had a rocky relationship with my host family in Italy. Specifically, my host mom and I never connected. My host mother’s icy attitude towards me led me to gravitate towards my mother for advice on how to deal with the situation. Opening up to my mother about my struggles abroad strengthened our emotional bond. Before Italy, my mother and I were not emotionally open with each other. However, when I returned home, my mother and I felt more comfortable sharing our personal lives with each other.
My friendships also changed when I came back from Italy; there were new people in my friend group. Although I did not know them well originally, they ended up becoming some of my closest friends. While I gained some new friends, I also lost some. In some situations, I simply grew apart from friends while I was away. At first, the loss of these friendships felt devastating, but it taught me a valuable lesson: that friends will come and go throughout my life. These lost friendships also helped me acknowledge that we had a good relationship but not dwell on the fact that the friendship was over.
When it came time to start the college process, I felt that SYA had helped me become more in tune with who I am as a person. My newfound knowledge about myself made writing supplementals about my identity a less daunting task. The changes I experienced before and after SYA helped me mature as a person. I learned that I am able to adapt to any situation that I am thrown into. I learned that I am able to be emotionally vulnerable with my mom. I learned that it is important for me to create a balance between time I spend on school and time with friends and family.
My experiences in Italy taught me valuable lessons that I plan to take with me beyond GDS because they encouraged me to change as a person and to make changes in my environment. By learning what I prioritize in life, I was able to convey more non-academic related parts of my identity to colleges during the application. Although my newfound knowledge assisted me throughout the process of writing my college applications, it also helped me understand more about who I am outside of my grades and test scores.
Rising seniors, I suggest that you try things to push yourself out of your comfort zone. You have to take the initiative to try new things and create opportunities to push the change within yourself. By embracing the change that comes along with new experiences, you can in turn learn more about yourself.