What it’s really like to go on a year abroad

Now I bet you’ve heard it all before, kind of like the whole vegan thing – how can you tell if someone’s done a year abroad? You can't, they tell you, and I myself am guilty as charged. But what don’t you hear about the year abroad? The year abroad is always smothered in a hefty layer of sugar, plastered across flawless Instagram feeds and thrust down your throat at every opportunity. This is something I deem to be extremely unhealthy – why are we lying to ourselves and everyone around us? Why can’t we just admit the simple fact that in reality, the year abroad is really bloody hard; it’s not always rainbows, smiles, beaches and adventures.

The very last year abroad lecture was rammed full of excitement and high expectations, claims of “I’ll be going to Brazil, then I’m going to travel around South America” and “Can’t wait to have the best year of my life in France”. This was the year that everyone had been waiting for ever since choosing their course on UCAS. The problem is that they place such high expectations on people to make it the best experience of their life, but the thing is, everyone's 'best's' are necessarily the same.

It wasn’t until September, when I found myself stranded in the South of France having lost my job, my flat and my self-esteem just one month after my year started that I was made aware of the fact that this probably wasn’t going to be the best year of my life. Only at this point, I thought I was alone in thinking this. Shortly after, I moved to the North of France for a fresh start; new job, new city and hopefully new friends. I absolutely hated it. Zero friends meant that my social life consisted of choosing to work a 6-day week and going for Sunday walks on my own (am I a ninety-year-old woman? Or just mad? Who knows).

France crawled along at a painfully slow rate; I was miserable, lonely, bloody bored and plagued with the Instagram feeds of my fellow course mates living it up across the world. Pictures of everyone going out drinking with all their friends, travelling to all kinds of amazing places, ticking things off their bucket lists. And there I was, tucked up in bed at 9 o’clock on a Friday night doing Sudoku puzzles and watching Bridget Jones for the hundredth time.

It wasn’t until I confided in a friend about how shit my year abroad reality was that I realised she was in exactly the same boat. We were counting down the days until it was all finally over. What’s more, is that there were so many more like us, feeling the exact same. The Year Abroad Illusion had been shattered and finally my expectations had started to drop.

Embarking on my next stint to Spain I made a decision: No more social media scrolling, no more high expectations and no more whining. It was time to attempt to squeeze some enjoyment out of it. Deciding to ditch the expectations allowed me to finally start enjoying myself. I stopped thinking "Why am I not finding it as easy as everyone else?" and started thinking "How can I make the most of every situation?". From then on I tried to focus on the little things that were making me happy – a coffee and a chat with a new friend, exploring a place I’d never been to before, even down to the mastering of that grammar rule in Spanish class that never stuck. From this came more and more good things. I made a small but amazing group of friends and I did things I’d never even imagined doing before, like riding camels to a desert campsite and partying with camel herders whilst wearing a turban under the stars. I genuinely started to enjoy myself because I stopped caring about what everyone else was doing and focused on my own experiences without the high expectations that preceded the whole year. I had a great six months in Spain, maybe they weren’t the best six months of my life, and then again maybe they were, but why does there have to be a specific time that should be the best for everyone?

Drunk me ft. Mohammad the camel guy

The point is that experiences such as the year abroad always have such high expectations placed upon them that people feel a pressure to live up to. When the expectations can’t be reached, it leaves you feeling like you’ve failed and you’ve missed out on a massive opportunity and you end up feeling, quite frankly, extremely disappointed. If you abandon all expectations, expect the unexpected and encourage yourself to enjoy the little things and not ignore the bad, all in all, you’re going to be able to enjoy yourself way more and without all that pressure.

On your year abroad you will have times when you will want to give up and go home, when you're going to feel lonely and when you’re going to feel left out of home stuff. But you’re also going to meet a whole heap of great new people, have new experiences, explore new places and you’re going to have times when you feel like you’re having the time of your life. It might be the best time, it might be the worst time, or it might just be a year full of ups and downs, and every one of those options is OK.