The summer between my sophomore and junior years of college, I attended a 3.5-week humanities study abroad in Greece and then a 3.5-week civil engineering study abroad in Italy. I really enjoyed both, and the Italy study abroad actually inspired me to finally switch my major from mechanical to civil engineering. Because I had such a good time and learned so much on these trips, I was really interested in signing up for another one! I decided to apply for two 1.5-week MBA study abroad trips in Australia and New Zealand/Fiji for the summer between my senior year and my last undergraduate semester. I have been in the STEM to MBA program since freshman year and was accepted into the MBA program last year, so I was very interested in the two trips because I would get MBA class credit and get a head start on some of my classes for the program.
When preparing to head abroad, I spent a long time considering how and what to pack. In May, the countries I was visiting were at the end of their fall season, but still had vastly different climates. Australia felt like Alabama’s late fall season, New Zealand felt like mid-winter, and Fiji felt like late summer. Therefore, packing was a difficult experience. I ended up bringing one large suitcase with labeled compression packing cubes separated into categories like long-sleeve shirts, short-sleeve shirts, pants & shorts, swimsuits, etc. Because I would be doing classwork while abroad, I brought my school backpack to use to carry my computer and things I’d want on the many planes. I also brought a medium size, many-pocketed crossbody purse to carry my essentials such as my passport, money, and charger block and a lightweight, super compressible backpack that I used to carry things such as a jacket, snacks and drinks, and a selfie stick/tripod combo around on a day-to-day basis.
I’ve travelled a lot over my lifetime, so I wasn’t too worried or anxious about the trip. My biggest concern was how many activities were packed into such a short amount of time, as I was worried about getting burnt out and over-socialized too quickly. My sister attended a separate study abroad at the same time as me, and I’ve already been at college for years and therefore away from my parents for long stretched of time, so I wasn’t worried about being sad at not seeing them for a month.
I was of course excited to get class credit for travelling, but my biggest excitement for my trip was to see an area of the world I’d never visited before and that I would be unlikely to travel to on my own. I’ve been to North America, South America, Europe, and Asia before, so Oceania was definitely a new experience. First, I’ve seen lots of movies involving Australia, so I was excited to compare those to the real thing. Next, I was very excited for New Zealand because I love The Lord of the Rings and that’s where the movies were filmed. Finally, I was excited to see how Fiji differed from the island countries in the Caribbean.
