Study abroad part III: Everything is life-changing

My first  instinct in writing any final chapter is always to bring things to a tidy conclusion. At the end of my study abroad with my plane home scheduled for Thursday, this feels like a time for closure. Traditionally, this is the part where I tell you I lived happily ever after and it was all meant to be. Then I express my gratitude for the clairvoyant wisdom of past Katherine and thank her for making the decision that allowed me to grow and learn so much.

Here’s a fun secret instead: I had no idea what I was doing when I chose to study abroad, and, looking back, I still don’t. I took a guess. At one point I literally googled the homicide rates in Wrocław, my destination city, just to see if I were any more likely to get murdered, which was an actual part of my decision making process (odds were about the same as in Logan, if anyone is curious). In the end, I just took a shot. I made the choice that I thought the person I wanted to be would make.

In retrospect, I have learned a lot of important lessons. I’ve grown. I don’t regret it for a moment but I do think that retrospection has a way of imbuing things with a meaning that strips them of their truly random nature.

I can’t guarantee that I wouldn’t have learned the same lessons and grown the same ways if I’d stayed in Logan. I’ve learned that people are essentially the same everywhere, for better or for worse. I’ve met so many people at home and abroad who are willing to help a lost student in a new city. I’ve felt the unwelcome hands of young, drunk strangers in Polish nightclubs and every time I’ve ever been to the Utah State University Howl (what is it about that atmosphere that turns people into monsters? Like not werewolves, literally just dudes wearing togas and grabbing girls’ butts in the middle of crowded dancefloors).

Studying abroad was a guess, just like most of what I decide. I’m at least 70% sure I want to be a journalist, at least 20% sure I like the color of my hair, and at least 82% sure I want to be dating my current boyfriend (sorry Kenny). Sometimes I don’t feel like I’m even the most qualified person to decide what happens in my life. Based on my own track record, I would not hire me to make life decisions. I’m guessing, and it’s not a secret.

If you want me to give you the Buzzfeed version, I will. I’ll tell you I have a more global perspective and I grew so much, that now I know how to hold a wine glass and navigate the public transit in Paris, in London, and in Budapest. I’ll tell you that now, when I read about a bombing in Istanbul, I check Facebook to see the last time the Turkish people from my dorm, friends and acquaintances, were online. I’ll tell you it made me the person I am today, and that it changed my life.

But honestly, most of my experiences do. At this age, I’m a baby. College students are babies. We’re changing. We’re becoming, and all any of us can do is take a shot at becoming the people we want to be.

Sometimes when I call my mom and cry because I have no idea what I’m doing, she’ll tell me what she’s told me before, in the tired tone of a mother to an anxious child: “Katherine, there are so many ways to be fine.”

At the end of my story, at this finale that calls for closure, I am not going to write any. There are a lot of ways to be fine, and studying abroad was one of them. I feel lucky to have experienced it. And, I will express my gratitude to past Katherine —not for having any clairvoyant wisdom, but for having the guts to take this chance despite her being utterly underqualified to make this decision. She did the best she could with the information she had at the time. I think at that point I was about 60% sure, and looking back, it was enough.

—katdiane17@gmail.com