Everyone knows that the only reason you go abroad is so that you have an awesome Instagram and Facebook feed for pretty much the rest of your life. The countless #ThrowBackThursday’s and #FlashbackFriday’s will give you any excuse you might need to force photos of you in exotic (Western European and also maybe Prague) locations upon all your followers and friends, and they will endure this most likely for the rest of your life. Or until your children go abroad (and if my mother is any indication of this) and then I will start sharing photos of my children abroad, to a similar group of followers and friends. But amongst these photos abilities to reaffirm my coolness and ability to stay relevant, they also have a shockingly awesome ability to bring back old memories.
Second reason to go abroad, because a year later one of your professors will invite you over to their house to watch the videos of all of those #ThrowbackThursday photo’s that he took and put together and you will walk in the door to a big hug from his wife, and realize that you might have made some unexpected friends along the way. I thought coming back from Furman after two semesters abroad would be hard. There is just so much stimuli abroad, so many new things to discover, and so much learning outside of the classroom, so many beautiful sights you could never see in America, that I was afraid of reverse culture shock. Look it up it’s a thing. But I found myself busier than ever. I found myself trying to catch up on a year’s worth of missed sorority events, I found myself realizing I only had 3 semester left to take the approximately 28 classes that I just “couldn’t-leave-Furman-without-taking-because-this-class-was-the-best-class-ever-seriously-take-this-Molly”, so I found myself overloading, I found myself with not just more friends, but more Furman family that I had to constantly meal with, and that make my walk to anywhere on campus longer because I will inevitably see someone I know/love/miss-when-I-am-not-next-to-them-at-all-times, I found myself having to schedule dinners with my roommate, I found myself creating really long needlessly run on sentences because there is just too much life to fit into 4 years that my sentences have to be jammed packed, and I found myself not experiencing reverse culture shock.
The photo videos that I looked at today with my professors and my fellow sojourners made me miss abroad like no other. The photos of my friends currently abroad make me miss abroad like no other. But this beautiful weather, planning my classes for next semester, end of year visits with friends, and end of Furman visits with seniors, make me miss Furman like no other, and I am still here, sitting on campus as I write, and missing it like no other at the same time. I know that this is a Furman Admissions blog, and that there is risk of me not sounding genuine, (if it is any consolation I will be the first to tell you that Furman was hard first semester #HereToTalkAboutHomeSicknessWhenYouNeedIt), but I will also be the first to tell you that when I walk to school on the wooded path behind the chapel everyday, I feel like an unreal world is unfolding in front of me, and I am walking to the fairytale land known as Furman, and in just 2.138 semesters I will be woken up (abruptly) from this spell and thrown into something much less magical. Abroad was wonderful, life changing, and I would do it a hundred more times, but I would do Furman indefinitely (yes, please, can I?).