From submitting my study abroad application to stepping off a red-eye flight, I have been full of anticipation and excitement for my semester in London. However, the first couple of weeks were not what I thought they would be. Maybe it was due to the lack of sleep on the flight or the awful conversion rate of dollars to pounds, but I had a hard time adjusting to a new city.
I began to learn something about studying abroad that no one talks about. Study abroad does not have to be the best time of your life, or even a good one, but there is something about throwing yourself out of your comfort zone that teaches you things about yourself that you could not learn anywhere else.
People always told me stories of studying abroad — about these amazing trips and experiences, and how they wish they could go back. However, when I finally got there, I felt myself craving the comfort South Bend brings me. My whole life there felt simple and easy; I knew what to expect and when to expect it.
The vast differences between London and South Bend were thrown at me the second I bought my first meal. The average cost of living in London ranges between $3,500 and $4,500 per month, while the estimated average monthly cost in South Bend is almost half as much ($2,200 to $2,500). My regular eating and budgeting habits needed to completely shift, more than they ever had before.
I am not the only one to feel these differences. In 2023, a survey conducted by the Institute of International Education (IIE) found that more than 40% of students reported experiencing culture shock within the first few months of studying abroad. Managing this shock and finding my new routine was slowly starting to take a toll on me. However, as I tried to navigate through this, I began to learn new things about myself.
When I woke up at 6:30 a.m. to load onto a bus to Cambridge for another orientation activity that felt as futile as the rest, I still carried this feeling I had. In the King’s College chapel, I sat on the wooden pew and gazed at the stained glass. I watched as the sun wafted through the panes of blue and red. The top of the glass depicted a crowd of people being crucified, while the bottom depicted a king, both with people surrounding them.
In that moment, I imagined myself as one of the people in the crowd watching the crucifixion or watching the king. And in that moment, I realized that I was just someone in the crowd watching something either horrific or something powerful. I was not a part of the “few” that many philosophers talk about, but instead, I was part of the “many.” Study abroad was not about feeling extraordinary, but about learning to exist as part of something bigger than myself.
I took comfort in the fact that I was a part of what everyone else was. While I acknowledge that everyone is a unique person with different nuances and complexities, we are not all living that different of lives. My discomfort brought me closer to people than I had been before. We were not just some Instagram post with location tags and emojis, but we were navigating a completely new life together.
It is not revolutionary to find comfort in other people and to understand that you are not the only one feeling a certain way. However, I have always felt that no one could completely understand the complexity of my feelings without having had the same experiences as I. But when I got to London, I saw people with all different lives from mine, who felt the exact same way as I did. Recognizing this and using the comfort of other people, I have begun to see study abroad for what it is — not a lustrous highlight reel, but a way of teaching you to be okay even when you feel the world around you getting larger, more complicated and more difficult.
Abby Hernan is a junior, majoring in political science and applied & computational mathematics and statistics, from Orlando, Florida. She is currently studying abroad in London and is excited for her semester out of South Bend. When not writing for The Observer, you can find her buying overpriced coffee, scrolling through X or roaming the halls of Lewis. Reach out to ahernan@nd.edu.
