And so it ends...

This conclusion has been a long time coming. Pure procrastination… and denial. I wasn’t ready to admit that it was over and that I was back. In fact, the only reason I sat down tonight to finally write my “farewell” is that in the chaos of my schedule right now, I finally gained perspective.

School has started again. Senior year back in good ol’ Virginia. I’m taking very demanding classes (I’ve already written 4 papers since school started less than three weeks ago), I’m overly involved in every activity possible, and for every five things I complete on my “to do” list, 10 more are added. This specific week has been particularly trying. In fact, driving home at 2:30am after a very stressful day yesterday I hit a deer! (miraculously both my car and I survived… I have no idea about the deer). Between class, work, assignments, papers, readings, meetings, extra-curricular activities, discussions, leadership duties, volunteering, and my strained social life, I find myself reminiscing about my travels almost daily.

A lot of my friends who studied abroad describe their adventure as “surreal” and almost dream-like. I find myself often thinking the opposite. THIS seems surreal… abroad WAS real. Here I feel as if I’m in a constant “go” mode. My planner is my crutch and everything seems so painfully structured and contrived. Even in social situations I actually feel pressure to enjoy myself. Daily I remind myself that I’m doing all this so that I can graduate and hopefully get into a good grad school and/or get a good job.

However, there are little moments each day where I feel connected to Europe again. One professor asked me about Central and Eastern European literature for a course she’d like to teach in the spring. My advisor revealed to me how she once had drinks with the famous Polish poet and Nobel Prize winner Czeslaw Milosz. My Political Science professor is from Poland and we are starting a “Polish dinner” once a week. My German professor recommended an internship in Germany that would allow me to study East Germany as well as Central and Eastern Europe during the communist era. My Arabic professor wants me to bring in my photos and talk about my experiences in Turkey and Egypt.

So what do I miss most? Honestly I miss the “feeling” I felt the whole time I was there. I felt independent, calm, curious, stress-free, and alive! Two summers ago I studied abroad in La Rochelle, France and was enchanted by the way people seemed to really relax and enjoy life. However it was even more shocking to me to find a similar flavor to that of Central and Eastern European countries. Perhaps life for them is not as great, perhaps their jobs don’t pay as well, perhaps their “standard of living” does not always compare to what I as a middle-class American would think. However there was a sense of identity, of nationalism, of family, of belonging, of life that in the melting pot of the most capitalistic country in the world is so often lost or forced.

I’m taking a class called “Perspectives in International Studies” and on the very first day of class the professor posed the question “what is your identity?”. We discussed how there are so many different ways to define one’s self, “I’m a woman,” “I’m American,” “I’m a Texan,” “I’m a student,” “I’m a Christian,” etc. However in different contexts you tend to cling to different aspects of your identity. Although this might seem common sense, the question made me feel panicked. What IS my identity? With all my crazy life experiences I realized I define myself in adjectives, not nouns. And this is when I finally found perspective of what I had gained from Poland and my other travel experiences. This is what I came up with:

I’m a daughter, a sister, a friend. I’m a student, a colleague, a peer. I’m a Richmonder, a Texan, an American. I’m a Christian, a Moderate, a realist. But now I know my experiences have not changed any of that, they have merely added on to what I already have. I’m an inquirer, an explorer, a citizen of the world.

Thanks to everyone who read this. I hope you enjoyed the journey as much as I did.

Do widzenia!