The first few weeks of the program were harder than I expected them to be. I felt extremely homesick which was very surprising for me. I am from Houston and so going to Pitt was a big change and I experienced homesickness a bit when I first started my freshman year, but the homesickness that I felt abroad is completely different. The first few weeks were an adjustment, but I feel as though I learned a lot about myself and the city. My first biggest takeaway is that saying yes is the best thing you can do. Being in a different country offers a host of different opportunities that are not available in the states and saying yes can allow relationships to form and new experiences to happen.
I think that growing comfortable in a new city over such a short period of time can be very difficult and not achievable for all people. Comfort is definitely relative and for me, it can come and go at any time. My second takeaway from this experience would have to be that comfort stems for being okay with being uncomfortable. There are so many new experiences and time is fleeting and so making the most out of the experience even when uncomfortable makes it all worth it.
My third biggest takeaway from the experience is that growth is inevitable- whether that be positive or negative growth is subjective, but a change happens at some point. Coming abroad and getting out of my comfort zone changed my outlook and my confidence. There are challenging experiences associated with study abroad, for example one of my roommates left the program because she just did not like being abroad. While this is an extreme example, being abroad was an extremely difficult challenge for her and she grew to realize that being abroad was not worth it for her. For myself, I realized that just talking to people, even when anxious or overthinking interactions, made me so much more comfortable and confident which can translate back to life in Pittsburgh.
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