For those of you considering DIS, Study Tours are a crucial part of your semester: these are three weeks you’ll spend entirely with your Core Course. These weeks are meant as immersions into the core topic you’re studying, as well as immersing into a community meant to become a home base for you within DIS. But if you’re an introvert like me, two weeks of heavy travel with a group of people you don’t yet know feels like a daunting mountain to climb. No chance for alone time? No independence to recharge? Here are a few words of wisdom from someone (me) in the same position.
For the introvert abroad, here’s a bit of pep talk and a bit of a thought exercise for how to handle going on a DIS study tour for the first time.
Go where you want first, and the right people will follow. This was a mindset I stuck with throughout my study tour weeks like gospel. Personal growth is arguably the most fruitful mission of studying abroad. Finding out who you are and what you’re made of is the project of life—so why not do it in a new place? From me to you, I want to take this a step further: making the decision to be radically independent, not just in thought but in practice, will set you on the right direction to getting the most out of your time traveling with your class. I found that my most special moments on my study tours were some of my most private: stumbling on a show of live music in a bar on the island of Fanø; my first jump into the shattering cold of the North Sea; even a nighttime ride looking out the window of a tram in Berlin. These memories are pearls I hold close to my chest, only adding more value as I mull them over.
Everything is copy. Famous screenwriter Nora Ephron (often paraphrased by my mother) once said, “everything is copy.” What does this phrase mean? It’s a reminder that every ridiculous drama going on around you, every awkward silence, every off-color comment from someone else, has the potential for a fantastic future story. Taking this approach head on into new situations was a valuable mechanism to translate my study tour stress back into interest, and to reinsert myself back into the moment. Waiting for uncomfortable or “awkward” moments to be over is a fruitless way to live. During these study tours, being fully present in the new setting and academic material means facing discomfort head on. The upside of facing discomfort, however, is that it almost guarantees a good story to tell later.
Keep a journal, but keep it low stakes. As someone who writes happily and often, the writing part of a journal comes easy, but the impulse to self-aggrandize and write what I think an account of my trip should be is strong. This, of course, is a fruitless and often frustrating practice. Writing for someone else will never be a true diary account. Your most personal writings, even petty frustrations and slight worries will be what is worth most to future you.
Unfortunately, “low stakes” has some fine print. Write whatever you want, but date everything and bring it everywhere. Let it get wet, or stained, or in my case, sandy—the ability to record in the moment is worth possible damage to a pristine journal. It’s all about balance. Don’t think of the journal as a throwaway nuisance, nor a hyper-important palace of memory. A happy medium is best.
here is a page from my departure, including my sister and me.
Leave your AirPods at home. The full sensory experience of a new place is crucial in being able to keep your memories close and valuable. Whether it was hearing the ambiance of new language, the magnetic nature of a busker musician, or the ever-present whoosh of tidal patterns—these sensory experiences are crucial to understanding your place in a place. As an introvert, I’m often inclined to put my headphones in and tune out the world as a means of self-soothing or distraction. Making the conscious choice to leave the comfort zone of my music is one of the changes that have stuck since my study tour weeks. I continue to integrate this into my daily commutes back in Copenhagen. Keep the headphones off. You could hear something that will become a great story. The ambient noise of the cityscape you’re in will be a crucial part of your future memories.
The right people for you will prove it. Trust me. My DIS housemates and I all agree on this crucial element of study tours: some people you’ll travel with, you’ll love. And plenty of others, you won’t be able to stand. The human impulse to form cliques in stressful, novel social situations creates tension that can be hard to handle if you aren’t extroverted. For me, this plagued me for the first few days of each week. Armed with faith that the right people for me will find me, and I them, I pushed through the week and seemed to create a natural gravitational pull. My core class friends I’m closest to now share my core values: they are sincere, vulnerable, and deeply invested in the thinking and knowledge that comes with our course. We found each other by being uncompromising on being genuine.
If you obsess over trip itineraries, if you must see the menu of restaurants before deciding to go, you speak my language. Ever the fretting introvert, I have been learning how to practice self-talk as a means of self-care when traveling. By allowing myself to be both fully present and fully myself, my DIS Study Tours took on substantially more profound meaning than being detached and reserved would have offered. These three weeks are going to happen. How will you spend them? Ultimately, that’s up to you.
Heed my advice. Everything is copy.
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Learn more about expanding your comfort zone and adjusting to life abroad.