What to do When you Hated Your Study Abroad

When faced with stressed with everyday life and a busyness of a hectic trip it can be difficult to keep up with a travel blog. I know this first hand because I struggled to keep up with the blogs I was assigned for this study abroad trip to London. I was so excited to go on this trip that I skipped out on taking one of my core curriculum classes that I’m going to struggle to make up because I believed that this experience was going to be worth it. Now, at the end of this term, I’m not so sure it was. I still feel like a subpar travel writer, I didn’t get the chance to enjoy much of the trip, and this (as only a sophomore level class) was so overwhelming that I felt it forced me to drop the ball in many other aspects of my academic and professional life just to barely scrape by. But, I suppose if I’m going to make such intense claims I should give examples as to why I feel this way.

Before we even left for the trip there was still a lot of confusion about what exactly was happening. Overall, the trip was poorly planned and explained to the students participating. Many a time, before and after class, my classmates and I would discuss what issues we were having and voice our concerns about the trip and the workload. We didn’t really practice any writing before the trip, and what we did do we didn’t receive any feedback on until after our return. The largest writing assignment we did was an essay about class organized trip to the Baltimore Museum of Art. That was a very fun day for me personally because I love art museums, but I also got to explore by myself. Before turning in this writing assignment, we had a peer review day which I’m sure was beneficial to others, but I happened to be ill that week and couldn’t get my paper ready let alone be in the classroom. Things happen and I wouldn’t have had as much of a problem with the circumstances if we had been receiving peer review for other writing pieces and practicing developing a unique voice for our blogs, and later our website pieces due at the end of the term.

A major part of the writing process in the classroom, and the most important in my opinion, is workshop and there was no regular workshopping done. We had only written two or three blogs and had two in class writing prompts given to us. No one, not even our professor gave us meaningful feedback on that work. Most class time was spent in personal conversations between a few class members and the professor. I spent a lot of my time doing other work or on my phone. We consistently wasted time “discussing” the planned fieldtrip to the museum, what we mightwant to do while abroad, and repeating information from the previous class. Time we could have been using to practice our writing skills or preparing to navigate London was thrown away because no one felt comfortable enough to make decisions and our professor seemed to have no idea how to effectively facilitate a discussion in a timely manner.  We were expected to find different places in London we might want to go, and post them to a creative map. These places would have been wonderful inspirations for blog and website content while we were abroad. But, upon reviewing the itinerary it became clear that we would have very little time (mostly later at night) to be able to explore the city on our own. With no feedback and no plan for writing content while abroad we were left to our own devices to shape our blogs. 

To be perfectly honest, while in London, overall, I had a horrible time. I was so unhappy. There were a few times during the trip where our professor would ask us to do writing exercise. It was usually to write a short, creative paragraph or poem to describe and place or people we saw. Without fail these exercises were rushed and distracted for the experiences we were having in those places. For example, in Hyde Park, when everyone was chilly, hungry, and tired we all could have used some time to just enjoy walking the park on the way to lunch. But, instead we spent an extra half hour writing, putting off lunch, and inevitably making everyone irritable. 

We learned that only a few of us knew how to navigate in London, myself being one of them. Most of the time I was so tired or underfeed that I couldn’t do it well enough to attempt to guide others. It seemed like neither our professor nor our guide in London were prepared to move a group of 11-16 young adults through the city. We were consistently behind schedule or almost getting lost, which then cut into our time to explore as severely stressed me out. The number of times I was counting heads in transit, when the adults were not, became frustrating and scary, especially when a member of our group got lost. They were found at random by another class on the same trip and nobody in our group noticed they were missing till the other professor called ours. It was then that the responsibility of watching this student was pushed onto my roommate and myself. 

On top of trying to explore the city and helicopter parent my classmates, I was also trying to write five blogs and post two new locations with photos and writing to our creative map. In the end, I couldn’t get it all done on time. I was so tired, sad, and angry that writing was the last thing I wanted to, or could, do. Before departing from the US, we should have chosen blog and website topics to focus on during the trip. But because we didn’t I was overwhelmed by all of our experiences and was for the most part unable to single out specific events to write about. The whole point of traveling abroad was to write about it, and I just couldn’t. This drove me insane and broke my heart because I realized only a few days into the trip that I had wasted all that time and money on an experience I wasn’t learning from or enjoying. So what was I going to do? 

Write anyway. I mean, I still had a class to pass didn’t I? I chose to take as much control as I could get away with to make sure work got done. I by no means was the soul guide and producer of material for this class, I’m not making that claim. But, what I did do was; take on an extra page on the website, the tips and guide page to be specific, so that there was a place to go on the website to know how to make your way around without dying or getting mugged, and giving up the topic I really wanted to write about so someone else’s work could shine, because I knew I could make do writing on just about any topic. I’m not some self-sacrificing heroine, but I would like to think I’m a pretty good assessor of people’s skills and passions. So, in my mind it was in the project’s best interest that I let go of what I originally wanted to do. 

But, in light of all of the frustration of this trip, I still plan on continuing with this blog and turning it into the best that it can be. Because I love travel, and one bad trip isn’t going to stop me from exploring, creating, and sharing. It all comes down to passion and finding the best in crappy situations. For anyone considering starting their own travel blog I would highly encourage that they do! My only advise would be that you take control of your experience, plan the things you want to do and do them. And above all, find the things you are passionate about writing and focus on them, but always stay open to new experiences.