by Ashley Upchurch (rising senior)
Two months post-Finland and I’m just now realizing the reality of it all. I’m somewhere in the middle of risk-taker and couch potato; I’ll jump off a 30 foot waterfall, but the high ropes course scares me to death. So, Finland was a pretty big step for me and throughout the entire semester I would periodically pinch myself to see if I really was dreaming. I realize now that I did actually fly 3000 miles across the ocean and lived on my own for the first time, not to mention on my own in a foreign country. That’s the reality of my past five months. But, another reality has begun slowly to appear. I am behind by a full semester on course work.
I’m quite convinced that there are more detailed instructions on how to retrieve credits from a semester abroad than there are on a car engine assembly line. I’ve got four people currently working on getting my credits from Finland and I’ve personally talked to three of them on a pretty regular basis for the past two weeks. There was so much I could have done before leaving for Finland that would have made this whole experience a lot less difficult. But, being the procrastinator I am, I didn’t even decide to actually go abroad until about 3 weeks before my plane left. Needless to say, I was pretty unprepared and it showed when I returned to ECU short 18 hours. I highly recommend following instructions, planning ahead, and talking to your advisor and the International House as much as possible before you study abroad!
All the same, there’s nothing I’d trade for this trip abroad. I’ll definitely take all the headaches associated with it now. I couldn’t have asked for a better college experience than the one I found in Finland. From learning new ways to be a better educator to meeting amazing people I’ll never forget, Finland was worth all the paperwork and last minute deadlines.
Wednesday, August 13, 2008
Wednesday, August 6, 2008
Studying Abroad in Finland, Part I
by Ashley Upchurch (rising senior)
A year ago around this time, I was racing through Speight, the education building, trying to get ready to study abroad. At the time, I was too busy worrying over paperwork to stress about actually spending a semester in another country. Three months later, my paperwork was filled out and all I had to do was stop having nightmares about freak plane accidents or ending up in Siberia instead of Finland.
My fears were both sound and outrageous. First of all, who ever heard of a plane suddenly falling out of the sky, all its passengers dead upon impact in the Atlantic Ocean? Then again, how on earth does a giant piece of metal soar through the sky? Hadn’t anyone ever heard of gravity??? My anxiety didn’t end with the plane ride alone: I was going to Finland to live alone for my first time so far from home that it would take three trips across the US and back just to get there.
Finland, in my mind, was barren tundra full of man-eating moose and little to no civilization. Obviously, I was exaggerating: I knew moose didn’t typically eat people and if there was a place for me to study in Finland, there must be some people around. All the same, come July when everyone was pestering me over my plans the next semester, I couldn’t, for the life of me, remember why I’d chosen Finland of all places!
Brandi, the assistant director of International Relations at ECU, had somehow brainwashed me into thinking one of the northern most countries in the world where the average temperature doesn’t go above 55 (I have a deep and passionate dislike for cold weather, by the way) was a great place to study. She explained how she’d spent so much time there and personally attested to its beauty and enjoyable nature. She explained all of this to me that December. Seven months later, I was boarding a plane and still questioning both of our decision-making abilities. Little did I know that just a week after getting on that cramped plane in the RDU airport, I would find myself enjoying the best food I’d ever tasted, experiencing life as I’d never known possible, and meeting more interesting people than I could have ever before claimed!
A year ago around this time, I was racing through Speight, the education building, trying to get ready to study abroad. At the time, I was too busy worrying over paperwork to stress about actually spending a semester in another country. Three months later, my paperwork was filled out and all I had to do was stop having nightmares about freak plane accidents or ending up in Siberia instead of Finland.
My fears were both sound and outrageous. First of all, who ever heard of a plane suddenly falling out of the sky, all its passengers dead upon impact in the Atlantic Ocean? Then again, how on earth does a giant piece of metal soar through the sky? Hadn’t anyone ever heard of gravity??? My anxiety didn’t end with the plane ride alone: I was going to Finland to live alone for my first time so far from home that it would take three trips across the US and back just to get there.
Finland, in my mind, was barren tundra full of man-eating moose and little to no civilization. Obviously, I was exaggerating: I knew moose didn’t typically eat people and if there was a place for me to study in Finland, there must be some people around. All the same, come July when everyone was pestering me over my plans the next semester, I couldn’t, for the life of me, remember why I’d chosen Finland of all places!
Brandi, the assistant director of International Relations at ECU, had somehow brainwashed me into thinking one of the northern most countries in the world where the average temperature doesn’t go above 55 (I have a deep and passionate dislike for cold weather, by the way) was a great place to study. She explained how she’d spent so much time there and personally attested to its beauty and enjoyable nature. She explained all of this to me that December. Seven months later, I was boarding a plane and still questioning both of our decision-making abilities. Little did I know that just a week after getting on that cramped plane in the RDU airport, I would find myself enjoying the best food I’d ever tasted, experiencing life as I’d never known possible, and meeting more interesting people than I could have ever before claimed!
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