Senior Advice: Study Abroad


Wanderlust • Studying abroad allowed me to expand my horizons, and affected my senior year in more ways than I could have imagined. Emily Goldberg | Daily Trojan

Screen Shot 2016-01-26 at 8.00.40 PMWith a little more than three and a half years of college under my belt, I consider myself somewhat old and wise. (If I didn’t, what did seven semesters’ worth of tuition go toward anyway?) Or at the very least, old and wise enough to offer a small suggestion to underclassmen. So heed my advice when I say do everything you can to take the chance to study abroad — even if it’s just for the summer.

I studied abroad in Madrid during the second semester of my junior year, but the impact it has had on my college experience was much more than that one semester. With the one-year anniversary of my flight to Madrid last week, I would feel remiss to not write about it. At the risk of sounding cliché, like another girl who went to Europe for four months and came back saying it was “life changing,” just hear me out.  

Living in a foreign city for a finite amount of time with a seemingly endless list of activities to do and sights to see makes you want to take advantage of every waking moment. Spending the afternoon in bed watching Netflix was not an option when I had a city, country — hell, an entire continent — to explore. Of course it was impossible to see it all, but I did my best.

My unrelenting urge to explore didn’t subside when I returned to L.A. for senior year. Instead, I channeled that energy into finding new places to eat (yes, mostly eat), drink, shop, see things and do things around L.A. If I was tourist in Madrid, what should stop me from being a tourist in L.A.?

I learned that the end of study abroad didn’t have to mean the end of spontaneous weekend trips. Instead, it meant deciding to driving up to San Francisco to see the Pac-12 Championship game or spending a few days in Santa Barbara to celebrate being done with finals.

Studying abroad gave me a new appreciation toward exploring L.A. and all of Southern California. Being from the East Coast, I still consider myself a tourist in California and especially so since I’m not sure if I’ll be in California after graduation.

Studying abroad also gave me a much needed break from my routine at USC. By studying in Madrid, I was able to meet new people that have since become so important in my life. I was lucky enough to become such great friends with the people on my program that I can’t imagine what my senior year would look like without them. While some of the friends I made in Madrid were people I may not have crossed paths with on campus, others are people that I already knew as acquaintances but was able to get to know much better in a different setting.

It’s so easy to fall into a routine on campus: you live with your friends, sit with people in class that you likely already know and go out with the same people. By junior year there’s a good chance you’ve found your place at USC. Maybe you’re content with that, maybe you’re ready for a change.

The semester before I went to Madrid, I felt like the rest of my college experience was somewhat set in stone. Studying abroad changed it in the best way possible, and I could not recommend it more.

Emily Goldberg is a senior majoring in print and digital journalism. Her blog column, Diaries of a Second-Semester Senior, runs every Thursday.