Melissa's Exchange to Nottingham Trent University | England
Think of exchange as a P.D experience. Personal Development begins the moment you cross the security lines in the airport and you are on your own. Embrace that absolutely terrifying fear of ‘what the heck happens next?!’. You seem completely silent and yet that voice in your head is screaming. Don’t kid yourself either. You will cry. I mean, never in my life have I had to say goodbye to my family like that. You don’t even realize its all actually happening until you have to give one final wave. I cried so much they could hardly recognize my passport photo! Lucky for me I had what seemed like endless hours on my flight to process what had just happened and what was about to unfold. This was unfortunate for the guy sitting next to me who really wished he had pre booked his seating before getting on the plane.
I hardly thought of what was to come. I remember thinking “I’m no good on my own, I need my family. What if I can’t take on the world without them? I know they know I love them but how can that be enough when I am leaving for so long?”
My dad left me with one line of perfect advice – “There is never a problem we cant fix”.
I calmed down about four hours in. Once I was given food and had had time to nap it all out. It is important to get a playlist organized before you depart. This is vital in getting you back to the overly excited; I’m on top of the world feeling you had before you realized how big this whole thing is. The song that really got me excited for the adventure was 360’s Run Alone. Definitely worth checking out!
My first reaction to landing in England was very predictable. “Holy cripes it. Is. Freezing”. I mean I believed it but at the same time I was like ‘yeh.. I can handle it, thanks.’ I was wrong. So wrong! I was shivering and had so many layers on. How is that possible? I felt like a giant marshmallow with all my layers on. It felt like everyone else was at peace with their layers when I felt like mine where swallowing me whole. Definitely something I had to get used to.
I was in that weird in-between kind of mind frame on my way to Nottingham. Had no one to really talk to and nothing to really say! I got to the coach station and immediately felt like an ant in a city, which I kind of was. I knew I was only staying walking distance away but got in a taxi anyway. Getting lost is not always the best way to travel. The complete opposite happened when I was leaving. I took the short cuts to the station and walked passed all the familiar buildings I had come to appreciate.
You know when you start Semester one of the year and you think ‘I am going to be so organized!’ You plan out all your readings and assignments and expect it to last all semester. Well exchange isn’t much different. I started out with lists. SO many lists. Such organisation.
Very first on the list was to join a group, aka make friends! Be the social butterfly everyone told me I was before I got to Nottingham. Don’t get me wrong, I am a confident little butterfly but there is none of this #adventure #noregrets #travellife nonsense. More like #sweatypalms #heartthumping #whereami? Its scary walking into a group that is already comfortable with one another. Braking down my own ideas of myself and allowing people, who had no clue of who I was to get to know me meant I got to know myself as well.
Slap a bit of confidence on your face and pretend you eat scarier things for breakfast. I don’t care what I wrote on my Instagram #picoftheday. I was faking it the whole time and it worked! They don’t know me from a bar of soap (classic Aussie lines go down a treat). Honestly, go into every situation with the knowledge that confidence is key and every step is open. The number of pre-drinks I turned up to on my own (Social suicide I know.. until they realize you are cool enough to pull it off) known only as the Aussie exchange student was huge. You learn to let go of silly social rules.
When I moved into my apartment I promised myself I would take all the opportunities that came my way, small or big. The first was having dinner with my Portuguese housemates and meeting another student who went to the same university as myself. She told me she was a part of the women’s cricket team and the Thai boxing association, would I like to come to some of the trainings? YES. There we have it, officially a part of the Nottingham Trent Thai Boxing team. Not something I ever thought would happen.
This lead to my first night out in Nottingham - the famous ‘Ocean Wednesdays’. Every sports society has a theme for the night such as angles and devils, wolves, anything but clothes, hippies and so on. This happens every Wednesday and starts with pre drinks at a members place followed by a bar crawl. All societies end at the club ‘Ocean’. You can just imagine.
The Thai boxing team was amazing. We went on sports tour to Spain as a team of around 40. All crammed onto a coach for 24hours! You can’t help but form friendships in a situation like that. We went on a ‘boat ball’ together as well as the NTU Sports Ball. There were plenty of occasions where we went to someone’s house to watch sport. There were Thai boxing events and dinners. Friends were made that I will never forget.
You are probably wondering, did I do ANY uni work while I was there?! Yes, yes I did. I loved it. Not only because I was interested in the units (called modules there) but because I met all the other exchange students and we could all relate to each other and talk of places all over the world. The most repeated sentence – When you come to ___ call me! There will always be a place for you to stay! The university structure was very different to ours at home and that took some getting used to. I felt a little discouraged at first. It took me a while to realize, I can’t change it so I should embrace the differences. After that it was all okay.
- Melissa studied abroad at Nottingham Trent University, UK
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