Before the start of this program, I had plenty of common fears running through my mind. What if I don’t like it here? What if I don’t make friends? What if I get lost and can’t get back to the hotel? The list goes on, but the real largest struggle was something that never crossed my mind, but definitely should have given the past couple of years. Getting sick while in summer school was a real drag. 

    The first week of the program was a lot of fun, but dampened by the fact that sickness was spreading through the group relentlessly, an experience not too different from my first month at Pitt freshman year. Most of the people involved in the program were staying in the same hostel, with other students as their roommates. When one person got sick, whether with covid or something else, there was no isolation protocol in place for that person besides trying their hardest. When you are sleeping in the same room as four other people though, wearing a mask in the room wasn’t enough to stop the spread. People who tested positive for covid had to attend the lectures online, which was pretty difficult when classes are 5 hours a day and clearly not designed for online learning.

    The first weeks of sickness probably would have already been the greatest struggle of my trip, but the second wave of sickness really cemented it. Around the third week, another cold started getting passed around with the same merciless efficiency. Everybody was a little more flippant about it on the second go around though, since we realized that nothing could really be done to stop it. I just got a typical cold, a couple days of some slight coughing and congestion, but some people had it a lot worse. Multiple people had to go to a doctor at some point during the program, which was a nightmare for people with a fledgling understanding of the German language. The worst part of it was that I couldn’t really do anything to prevent it or fix it, I just had to hope that it would go away quickly and not be too painful. The only real advice I can give about how to deal with getting sick while studying abroad is “Don’t”. It wasn’t the end of the world, but it would be the one thing I could change about my experience so far if I could.