 Hi everybody, my name is Katie and welcome to my channel. If you have never been here before, I studied abroad in Edinburgh, Scotland last year and I actually only got home about two weeks ago. I did a similar video to this when I came home for Christmas but now that I have spent a full year abroad, I really wanted to like dig into my experience in a more complex way because from the last video I had only been gone from September to December but then the longest stretch away from home was January to August. We are going to talk about the 10 greatest benefits of study abroad. These are in really no particular order, just sort of like the order that I thought of them in. Also subscribe. So number one is confidence slash independence. Getting on the plane for study abroad is a lot scarier than you may initially think. It didn't really start to hit me until about two weeks before I was like done a move to Scotland that I was like, oh, I have to move to a whole other country by myself. Once you start packing up that suitcase and getting everything in there, you really just start to realize how ill-prepared you feel, even though you may be very prepared. Even just making the step to get on the plane and go there by yourself is, it's a big deal and it can feel this thing that's very, sort of like a thing that just everybody goes through so you shouldn't have any feelings about it because it's just kind of like a thing that everyone does and you'll be fine. I promise you everybody getting on that plane is feeling and riding that same level of emotions that you are. It is probably one of the most independent feelings that I've ever felt in my whole entire life. I also built a lot of confidence planning trips because everything is so close and you're up, you can just hop on a train or a plane and get somewhere completely new. Planning all those things by yourself or with friends or friends that you have just met is a really good way to build your confidence traveling and you can just build yourself as a cultured person. Like, oh, I went here, like, oh, I studied abroad and I went to this city to be that person. The other thing that really builds your confidence is making friends who challenge you. When you make friends in your host country, there are gonna be a lot of things that they ask you about. In my case, America, a very wide topic of conversation. People will really ask you some funny questions. Like I have been asked about cowboys, bears, the pledge of allegiance. All of these things that I just really never thought about. One of the things that really came up in my circle was my inability to, like, chill and relax and before I studied abroad, I definitely had this sort of, like, toxic need to be productive at all times. A lot of my friends really challenged me on that and they were like, oh, why do you feel that way? Like, that's kind of odd, why are you like that? And I definitely have been able to make in my mind in a more challenged viewpoint. Also exploring things by yourself. So there may be days where people have class and people are busy or some of your friends are gone for the week or the weekend. You can really build up a lot of confidence if you're not somebody who feels comfortable doing things alone to, you know, test your limits. Go to a cafe by yourself. Go to dinner by yourself. Go to a movie by yourself. That's one that I did this year and, you know, too, I'm a little introverted. So like, honestly, some of these things, that's just a regular Tuesday, but if you are not that type of person, I challenge you to, you know, go to a museum by yourself. It definitely creates a new context for you to view the world just through your own eyes and make up your own thoughts and feelings about the thing that you just did. Number two is gonna be the ability to sympathize with a new experience. It definitely grows your perspective just in a very natural way. When you go somewhere and you live in a completely new place, there are just gonna be things that people say or the way that people are or things that they do that are gonna make you view the world from that angle. Maybe it's not an angle that you particularly agree with, but it definitely can open up your scope of understanding of the world. And that's just something that naturally happens when you move to a new place. And I also have to say, I have such a deeper appreciation for people that do go abroad or move abroad because it is a challenging experience, a very rewarding one, but I definitely have gained a much, like a deeper, more than like a surface level appreciation of like what actually goes into that decision, your actual day to day life. Number three is gonna be avenues to explore who you are outside of your context. So I do talk about this in my four part series about Study Abroad, but just to elaborate on it a little bit more, there are certain social structures in your country that maybe you're like kind of aware of or you aren't, I mean, it just kind of depends on the people that are around you and also I am very much generalizing in this video, but one thing about American culture that like I didn't really, I couldn't really put my finger on, but like how my life changed when I moved over to Scotland is people definitely don't really ask you about high school. Even in adulthood, people will be like, oh, you were a feeder kid in high school or they'll just say things like that to you where it's like, does it matter what I did in high school? Not really, but it is something that's part of our culture that we have this like innate interest in who people are in high school and that's not really something that happens over there. Maybe it could, but it's definitely not as intense as it is here. I don't know if anyone else has had this experience. If you know what I'm talking about, please comment down below and like bounce ideas off because that could just be a me thing. I don't know. Number four is listening skills. One thing I will say about going to Europe as an American is you can definitely feel like you know less than a lot of people about the world in general. And what I mean by this is our country is very, very big and there's a lot of news going on around it all the time. A lot of our news is just sort of national. When you go over and people speak different languages or they know about different cultures and honestly, geography, my geography skills have gotten exponentially better since I studied abroad and that is something that I will only admit to you guys because I would be in conversations with people and they'd be saying like, oh, in this city and you know, and I'm like, where is that? I would leave the conversation, make a mental note and Google it later because there are some times where just keeping your mouth shut can save you some embarrassment or you can be brave and just ask the question depending on like the social situation if you feel like people are going to judge you or not. My geography skills were actually pretty good in terms of Americans, I would say. However, they definitely expanded. We're taking moments where you feel like you are in a safe space or you're with friends who will understand, ask questions and listen. I think that this is one of the most underrated things that happens on study abroad because just by being around other people, like besides class, I really learned the most about life and culture from experiences outside of the classroom. So really like living a life in the city rather than just, you know, gaining knowledge from a museum or from a textbook or a reading, you just get firsthand experience of culture in action. Number five is gonna be travel experience. I had been to the UK and I had been to Iceland before but before I actually came to Scotland, I hadn't been to that many countries in Europe. Now by the end of it, I have been to Ireland, Italy. Shoot, where did I go? The Czech Republic, Spain, Portugal, I've been to all of these different countries that I would not have otherwise had the chance to go visit and I feel really lucky to have those experiences to look back on. And I definitely have just more general knowledge about the world, very broad about these different countries but I can definitely have a surface level conversation about my experiences, you know, going to Italy or my experiences going to Portugal and I think that's really cool. Number six is going to be the ability to make casual friends. I went for a year on study abroad and I had friends who were only there for the semester and then I had friends who were there for the whole entire year and it's definitely odd making friends in that sort of space where you're like, I'm temporary, all of this is temporary. Pushing past that, I made friends with people who were only there for the semester and I had a really nice time with those people. Our friendships were very short lived but we got to go travel together or go explore Edinburgh together and I will honestly, I'll always cherish those memories in those friendships even though they were just for a short time. It's kind of fun to reach out to people now and just see how their experience coming back is and you have this nice shared life. I keep saying the word experience, experience. Number seven is the ability to see things in your culture that you couldn't see before. Leaving the US and going to Scotland, I now realize how odd things are, not odd but how specifically American things are sometimes like pep rallies and school spirit. That's just really not something that happens over there. College sports isn't really a thing and honestly, a lot of our college systems and like social life are kind of around, not actually not at my school but at some schools like going to football games and pep rallies and overall school spirit, there's definitely not a whole lot of school spirit over there. Nobody really wears college merch except they do wear American college merch which I think is kind of funny but not actually to the school that they are. Pretty much the only people that I saw wearing University of Edinburgh merch were other Americans who were studying abroad there. Just like kind of a funny little fun fact. Number eight is going to be being able to travel. In the European system, you have so much more free time in the week so while your lecture schedule may not be flexible, your actual learning schedule is going to be very flexible. So usually I only had one big paper and then one exam at the end of the term. You have a lot of time to, if you wanted to take off a Friday and go for a weekend trip, you can because there's not all of these assignments that you constantly have to sort of keep up with. You can sort of budget your time in a way that's very convenient. Number nine, having free time to explore hobbies and interests. Study abroad is a lot of free time. You do have the opportunity to study and travel and that can keep you really busy. A lot of the people I knew had just hours in a day where they really weren't doing much so if you have a hobby that you want to explore, it can be a really great time to get into something. Like I personally got into weightlifting which I got to challenge myself in a new way and that was really cool and I also had more time to work on my YouTube stuff so whatever you are interested in, you may have some more free time to do so. And number 10 is going to be making memories and friends. I kept a journal the whole time I was there and I tried to take as many pictures as I could. Now looking back, I'm so glad that I wrote all these things down because I didn't want to forget and I knew certain things that happened. I will forget just because, you know, human error. So anyway, thank you guys so much for watching. If you like this video, please subscribe, give it a like and comment down below if you've studied abroad. What was your biggest takeaway? What did you like the most? What, you know, challenged you the most? So thanks for watching.