I imagined that coming home from my study abroad would be sad, for sure. I knew that I would hate packing, hate saying goodbye, and that I would leave a piece of myself there. What I did not know is that I would be leaving a month and a half early due to a pandemic. That was the game changer. I was having a perfectly normal Thursday headed to Madrid…
Now that I am once again back in the United States, I can hardly believe all that happened during my semester abroad at the University of Bamberg. When I began making arrangements to study abroad back in the fall of 2018, I had absolutely no idea how things were going to work out. Of course the pandemic changed everything and left me with a few disappointments, but overall I would…
My time in Linz was too brief, but I made the most of what I got. I made many international friends and experienced a taste of education in Austria, all while seeing this part of the world for the very first time. I did not expect when I started this semester that the coronavirus would become a global pandemic. Witnessing Austrian crisis-response was certainly not an experience I wanted to…
When the school was first issuing recommendations to return home, I was dragging my feet, hoping that maybe the pandemic in Italy would stabilize and the government would get it under control, and maybe I could still spend my semester in Italy. However, as cases kept climbing, my family and I became more and more nervous, looking for our options depending on if I stayed in Italy or evacuated to…
Thanks to the corona virus pandemic, I have not had the experience of being on campus, attending lectures and seminars in person, or meeting my classmates. Everything has taken place online, meaning that communication is often slower and more difficult than it would have been otherwise. This can be quite frustrating at times. To be honest, I find it much harder to concentrate when I am not in front of…
Studying abroad during the pandemic has taught me a valuable lesson in how to see the good and remain optimistic in any situation, no matter how bad it is. I’m sure everyone is all too familiar with the feeling that nothing is going right and having to find something to look forward to, especially in the current situation, and I do not claim to be the only person going through…
When I wrote my introductory blog post I had no idea how deeply the coronavirus would impact my time abroad. Despite the recommendations from the College, I decided to accept the risk and board the plane for Stuttgart—I received the email in the airport literally minutes before boarding began, so it was really a spur-of-the-moment decision. And although there have certainly been some disappointments and difficult times along the way,…
It seems that once I fully adapted to my new life in Spain, I had to come back home because of the coronavirus. The coronavirus rapidly spread through Spain. I don’t think anyone realized how devastating things were about to become. Only two days after CEA study abroad program in Seville was canceled, president Trump announced travel restrictions for students coming back from Europe. My roommates frantically called their parents…
