Twenty years old and feeling like a teen in a country-mandated “adult’s” body. I’m Anitta, an Indian American English major (weird combo, I agree), and I just have no clue. I’m sure I’m not the only one.
Finding out that I got into the Temple University Study Abroad program in Japan was not the end of my process. There were plenty of forms to submit and manuals to read afterwards. Most of them were simple enough. Submitting the housing deposit was not difficult to figure out. Clicking “finished reading” on the various “must read” forms on the application website was satisfying. I felt like I was accomplishing so much with each checkmark. But it’s a deception. Boxes like “Japan’s COE” came with so many forms to fill out and so much information to gather. There were plenty of deadlines to keep track of, like when course requests were due (a date that almost snuck past me). The program emphasizes the need for a person to do this on their own in order to exercise independence. I do not disagree with this thought. As a child of two immigrants from rural South India, I have plenty of experience wrestling with numbers and struggling to wrangle signatures for the FAFSA and CSS profile on my own. But doing the Study Abroad forms on my own allowed the reality that I would be on my own in a foreign country, where I don’t know the language, sink in. And that was scary.
People would ask me about my fall semester and I would tell them about Tokyo. Their faces would light up and the inevitable question: “Are you excited?” I knew what they wanted to hear: “Of course I am!” What they did not know was that deep inside the fear was overtaking the excitement. I know what I will do: study up on Japanese culture; learn as much conversational Japanese as possible over the summer; and make sure I know all the characters related to transportation, airports, directions, and money. The steps I will take to minimize the fear will help but the fear will not completely disappear. I know this because this is what happened before I left for a college that was located 12 hours away by car. I believe it is fine to let the fear be your primary emotion. I am going to a whole other country; why should I not be scared? It doesn’t make me any less excited; I may be scared now but a month into the program and my feelings will probably change. Maybe I won’t find friends instantly, but I’m sure there’s someone in Tokyo; and if not, that’s fine because I have friends back home. Maybe I don’t know the language that well. A month in, I’m sure I’ll be able to make do because I am not the only person who has gone to a foreign country without a good grasp of the language. Others have done fine and so will I. Maybe I’ll get lost. Well, that’s not so different than when I’m back home, so that just means it’s time to whip out the phone like I always do. Change will always be scary for me. Nevertheless, I will never stop taking the next step because where I am right now is not where I want to stop.
