 I dealt with pretty bad culture shock when I came back to the US. I'm so sorry. I have not made a new video in probably since October and you may be like, oh my god, Katie, where did you go? Or you may be like, you went where? Huh? It's probably more the second one. If you want to skip to the video, I'm going to leave a timestamp but I am just going to like sort of explain where I've been just for a couple of minutes. Basically in October, I was in my senior year of college and I am applying to grad schools and I'll be able to tell you guys about that like a little bit more and I have heard some news which is very exciting but not all of it. I'm still waiting for things to like shake and shake out and settle. Yeah, in October I realized that it was just time to take a break and YouTube was the one thing that I just sort of had to let go of for a little bit but I have come back and I have made a plan and I will be here again every single Friday making content for you guys and let's just get right into today's video just like. So last year I made a video called what I wish I knew before studying abroad for a year and I don't really remember much of what I talked about in the video but I'm being honest because I don't go back and watch my own videos because I think I would jump off a cliff. So I'm gonna try and explain this comment in the best way that I can. They were referring to something that I said in the video where basically I was saying like when I go back to my actual life that's something that I said in the video and so they wrote this comment and so they go well that's what's keeping me thinking. Exchanging is good but you leave your permanent life on hold don't you? What if you come to discover later that you should have made use of your time at home? What if you come back and things aren't the same? I have never had such a direct comment about sort of like the value of study abroad before and it's gonna tie into that like the full theme of this video which is what it's like moving back home after you're studying abroad because that is where I think a lot of the value is that is not often at the forefront of your mind when you're thinking of going to study abroad. You're never thinking about like when I come home. While I do disagree with the comment, they definitely do have a point. The language that I used in that video basically implied that the life that I was living in Scotland wasn't my life at all and I think in a really real way that moving abroad can feel like that and I feel like it's a very accurate depiction of the experience and I feel like it's really just a big exercise of living a life that feels just sort of like randomly placed in front of you on a platter you know like everything around you is going to change your friends where you go to school how you go to school how you get around the way you communicate with people it's everything around you changes so it really kind of feels like a simulation like it doesn't feel real but I think that's where the most important work of study abroad happens especially for somebody who like me I am and I have been working on this but I am not really somebody who trusts a lot of people or at least I wasn't prior to studying abroad like I just I think we've all had experiences in our life that we everybody's had experience in their life where people hurt you and you close off to experiences to other people and you can just kind of stay in like your little bubble when you move to another country every single thing is different and it feels like a simulation you sort of have to remember how to trust people to be okay and I think that that is one of the most important things that I gained from studying abroad from moving to another country looking at your time abroad it should never feel like a waste of time to you and I think that that is really important well and this is what I always talk about with taking a gap year as well when you waste your time or when you feel like you're wasting your time you're always getting something out of it that you wouldn't have had if you were just submerging yourself in work or school or whatever it is you would have been doing if you didn't take time off or you didn't move to that other country and thinking of it as lost time I think it's like kind of missing the whole the whole point and that totally makes sense you know if you have a life that you love back at home that you feel like you're going places and maybe you don't want to go study abroad because you feel like everything's okay but the the key of what I'm trying to get at is that studying abroad changes your perspective it changes your perspective on a lot of things and it teaches you how to critically think about every single aspect of your life so like I remember I had a conversation and this is just like daily life living with other people this doesn't even have to do with school which a lot of the times like I talked about that that in other videos like going having a different learning system that's a whole other thing but like I remember having a conversation once because I was in Scotland right and they eat this disgusting food called Haggis so sorry people from Scotland it's pretty gross but I remember uh I was there was a guy who was asking me he was like well what's a meatloaf and he didn't know what meatloaf was and I had to sort of explain what meatloaf was and defend meatloaf and I feel like that's a really good example of a perspective change because there are all these things that we may deem weird or odd or we don't really fully flesh out the idea because it's like we're just presented with what we know and when you get asked those questions like I remember kind of like stopping in my tracks and being like wait meatloaf is kind of weird when you come back from study abroad it will not feel like lost time so this is like really getting to the heart of this conversation I dealt with pretty bad culture shock when I came back to the US I only went for a year but it was a really hard transition for me because like I was coming back to this school where like I really didn't know anybody and like my life is honestly like so nice here right now and I'm very happy but uh it felt like there was a lot of loss at the end of my study abroad experience because I felt like I had made such nice friends and I had had all these wonderful experiences and I was able to just travel and study you know these things that I I really loved and I get to study what I love here too so that's like not really a thing but it's just different and coming back to American school the schedule that we are on is so it's so overloaded like I just had like no time in the day to even think about myself or it was just go go go go go um and I'm not saying like all American school is like that but in comparison if you've ever made the switch from like from European style learning to American learning there's just like a ton of busy work so you're like always turning something in and it's that was really hard for me to readjust to and to deal with because I had now been in this learning system where I had so much time to read and think about all the things that I was writing about because I usually only had like one or two big things do for a class so I was trying to put in like max effort for every single thing that I was doing because I kind of forgot like sometimes American school you have to just like finesse because there's there's not enough time in the day yeah I don't know going back to this like original question what if you come back and things aren't the same I'm not gonna lie to you I don't think anything is the same my perspective on so many aspects of life changed I changed a lot during my year abroad like I don't even between my gap year and moving to Scotland for a year when I came back to school here like I I remember walking around and like seeing old places where I used to do stuff and like thinking of my old friends and those kinds of things and like I just remember being like who even was that and honestly so I wrote this in my notes and I feel like it's just so true because the comment also talks about feeling like you lost time when you come back to your original life the hardest part about coming back is that when you come back your time abroad will feel like the only time everything reminded me of Scotland when I got back like the first two months like I honestly wouldn't shut up about it and I want to talk about that in another video because it's really kind of hard to deal with because you come back to your regular life and you're like oh that's different that's different that's different one of the one of the hardest things that I struggled with is I came back and I started to be put into like the boxes that I had been put in two years ago where people would see me and like I don't know if I've talked about this in my channel I forget but like someone said to me one time like oh you look like you read books but like as it was a bad thing and I was like what just just things like that where people would just being perceived again within your own culture and like being told what you are and I have so many more skills now to be like that's not you have it wrong like this is who I am and I am so much more like I was quietly confident like I've been quietly confident my whole life but I feel like that quiet confidence has spread to being a little bit louder that like if somebody assumes something about me or says something like I don't have a problem being like no actually this is how I am or this is what it is and and a lot of that came from you know and I talked about this in other videos too like having to explain who you are that's what you have to do a whole year when you're abroad is you constantly have to be like oh this is who I am and that definition of yourself becomes completely different by the end then when you come back it's like if someone says you're one thing you can be like no I'm actually I'm this other thing and it's it's it's nice I don't know I hope that means it makes any sense um no hate to this person who left this comment I think that this is like such a cool comment and I'm like so grateful that they left it because it sparks such an interesting conversation if you heard something in my argument you're like that's not that doesn't seem right leave it down below because I'd love to like continue this dialogue and talk about the benefits other than just you know getting to travel and getting to you know see other other places and like do cool stuff because it's it's just everything else that's that becomes so much more important when you come home so yeah thank you guys so much for watching and I will be posting every friday from now on you can follow me on instagram I may or may not post on there and i'm gonna try to respond to some of your messages soon because I did just take like a social media break and yeah uh it's it's been fun to do this again okay