Looking back, it is hard to believe that it has already been one month since I came home from my study abroad trip this summer. I can say with confidence that I already miss the time I have spent in both Washington, D.C. and Brussels, Belgium. In retrospect, what surprised me the most about my experience was the cultural differences between the pace of life in the United States versus in Belgium. It was so interesting to me that in Belgium, for example, many restaurants did not open until later in the evening, and that many of my interactions with locals felt casual and markedly less rushed than they may have been in the United States. To follow, I think one piece of advice I’d give to others who plan to study abroad is to embrace different approaches to daily life that may be present in your new environment, especially because it will make it easier to learn from them and even incorporate them into your own life if you wish to do so. 

My biggest takeaway from my study abroad experience is that it has helped me think more optimistically about my career path. I’ve always let my interests guide my plans of study, which has led my education to sometimes feel like a conglomerate of different liberal arts topics that I simply enjoy researching and discussing without a greater, unifying plan. Because this plan of study does not lead to one specific, prescribed outcome (such as being a pre-med student with an intent to go to med school), I’ve sometimes felt self-conscious and worried about finding a career that will fit into my areas of study and incorporate all the fields that I’ve been working towards in my 3 years at Pitt. After hearing from various career professionals on my trip’s site visits, I feel like there are many more unique career paths that I had not simply known about or considered that I could pursue which would be able to make use of all the faculties I have been creating in myself throughout college. 

For example, various people who spoke to my study abroad cohort emphasized the need for some researchers, foreign service officers, and even domestic government workers to be multilingual which is something that particularly piqued my interest, as I study language as well as other political and governmental-related fields. With that said, I feel much more confident that I will be able to find my niche and become a professional, even with my mixed liberal arts educational background and I feel like my study abroad experience has led me to consider possibilities I never even knew existed.