<p>I'm starting the summer before my senior year, so I'm not going to have a chance to study abroad. I did some careful research into my options earlier on, but I ended up with a great research position that made the idea of leaving school for a couple of months really unappealing. </p>
<p>on Facebook, I've noticed that a lot of students who study abroad travel extensively. some of them are with programs that take them to different places, but others just seem to make friends and then go places. it's not just that someone in Edinburgh heads down to London. people travel to many major cities and tourist areas of the country where they're staying, but they also go to at least two or three other countries altogether, and not necessarily the adjacent ones.</p>
<p>I want to know how this is possible in a number of respects:
- I have been able to save from my job for years, but not many students have that luxury. I still would be very very hesitant to spent what must amount to thousands of dollars on transportation, lodging, sustenance, and sightseeing. are their parents paying for all of this? if so, it is generally expected that parents would pay for their children's youthful traveling? even people who are not wealthy seem to be able to travel while abroad.</p>
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<li><p>I also want to know how students can travel when they are also taking classes. even when I'm taking a light course load, and imagining I didn't do anything else extracurricular, I cannot imagine taking off a few days a week to travel around North America. I would have a hard time enjoying a lot of traveling with classes on my mind. if the classes are so easy that you can also take a couple of small vacations through the semester, then they're definitely not the quality that my university offers me here!
plus, if you're in abroad, you'd miss out on the culture of the university where you're studying. I have never even seen a picture of a university among the photos people put up. it also seems that all the Americans are traveling together, which isn't going to give very much cultural perspective or (if applicable) language practice. I'm not that good at spontaneously making friends, so if I were studying abroad I wouldn't be surprised if no one invited me along on their weekend trips...</p></li>
<li><p>I also want to know how people can stay safe. I've never traveled much either domestically or abroad, so I probably have very poor traveling skills. I would be worried about staying in an unsafe residence, or walking down a bad street, or getting caught in a tourist scam at a monument or market. do study abroad programs teach you how to travel safely, or do people just understand how to stay safe when the time comes? I have seen a lot of people in their 20s do plenty of unsafe and reckless things, so assuming that everyone just has great judgment doesn't seem reasonable.</p></li>
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<p>although it might look like I've already come to my conclusions here, these are just my current ones, and they obviously don't match up with the way people actually do things while abroad. I basically want to understand how people can feel secure in terms of time, money, and safety.
I also would like to travel abroad myself one day, and if I can understand how people who are studying abroad are able to travel, maybe I'd have more confidence planning a trip. I also may want to pursue some kind of degree after undergrad (I'm highly undecided about how that would go) and I would want to know whether graduate school would be at all compatible with this kind of travel.</p>