Preparation

“By failing to prepare, you are preparing to fail.” -Benjamin Franklin

Preparation

Before the trip happens, I want to underline how much work and preparation it took actually study abroad like I’d wanted to coming into college. It felt a bit like applying for college all over again, having to learn about the system at Penn, schedule meetings with advisers, and tell my friends where I was planning to go… all during the semester of classes and clubs and craziness!

Freshman year, I started laying out an outline of my academic schedule, and see when was the best time to leave. Turns out for my major, there is no good time to leave with all the required labs every semester, and senior design senior year. So, I chose sophomore spring to give myself time to catch up after I got back, and started putting the process in motion before freshman year ended with a preliminary meeting with an abroad adviser. Penn Engineering only offers a couple of exchange program schools that can count for credit, and I like learning languages (currently I’m working on my French and Chinese), so I quickly narrowed down my choices to top 10, then to just France and China, and finally to China when I saw the program specifics and chance for a scholarship. The Chinese school, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, had a late start to the spring semester (late February to end of June), and gave me an opportunity to travel to China for Chinese New Year before school started, and maybe intern for the summer after school ended. With the study abroad program and semester decided, I thought the rest of the process would be streamlined- people study abroad all the time right?

Turns out, no one had been in the program I chose for at least 8 years, and I had very little precedence. Engineers were also less likely to study abroad, and the system wasn’t really in place. To start with, navigating the system at the decentralized University of Pennsylvania took me around campus to Penn Abroad, the School of Engineering and Applied Science, Student Financial Services, and Student Financial Services to name the many offices I would frequent to organize the trip. At the peak of madness, I was keeping 7 people in the loop of my plans for study abroad, including a liaison in the China study abroad school. I did the majority of my school specific research before school started, and the application during the fall semester. I started applying the last week of August, didn’t stop until October, and didn’t receive admission until November. The advice I would give to prospective study abroad students is to definitely start early and use emails effectively to gather information and get reminders about deadlines.

Once I actually knew I was going, I broke the news to my close friends in person, then publicly posted it. Penn already feels like home, and I’ve gotten so comfortable with my friends and life on campus that it feels sad to leave for a semester, knowing that life goes on when I leave. Major FOMO. Luckily, I live nearby, and I visited during the first 2 weekends of the spring semester, and got to host a going-away party to see everyone again. It helped when I thought about it as a “See you later” rather than a “Goodbye”, which was much too sad. I don’t like change, but I like new things, and sometimes the two are mutually exclusive.

This is the longest I’ll be away from home. Alone. That’s a scary thought, and I haven’t quite grasped what that means yet, I’m just hoping that the Internet and FaceTime will mitigate homesickness. Like I said before, I don’t like change, but it happens.

In line with my sort-of-not-really-we’ll-see New Year’s Resolution of taking more responsibility for my actions, I resolved to take ownership of this trip. That means, I was in charge of setting timelines, and actually booking the flights and hotels. Of course my dad helped, but ultimately it was my responsibility. After finding out my dad couldn’t get away from work, it was decided that my mom would accompany me for 2-3 weeks before school started to travel around China. Cue 2.5 weeks notice to fast track a Visa for my mom and book the flights. I finally ended up purchasing a package of custom flights with different return dates and hotels for my mom and I after a phone call with a specific travel agent that would manually create the itinerary…after being on hold from 2am to 9am. It was fun. I felt infinitely better about the trip after having the details.

Lastly, I prepared to go to China for the first time. Rather than language and cultural preparation, I focused on other issues that would be more foreign to me. (Although a major goal for me is to improve my Mandarin Chinese to native fluency.) I bought a PureVPN subscription immediately so I don’t have to let go of Facebook and Google. I figured out my student Visa. Looked at a big map of China. Bought face masks for the pollution. Downloaded WeChat. Asked family friends about it. Googled stuff.

Also, I made a blog, so even if I’m not prepared, hopefully I’ll at least get a funny post out of it!