Today is the campus Study Abroad fair, a time I used to greet with the delighted anticipation of what I could do, and where I could go. However, I’m graduating in May, and there are no more semesters for me to go away. Facing the prospect of graduation, with no real plans for grad school as of yet, nor of a job, I’d love to get away again.
As I left the fair, with one brochure for a possible graduate school, I realized I still want to go to Newfoundland with a good friend, and that dream may have to be put on hold with new developments in her life. The list of countries I still want to visit grows daily, and I’m planning on visiting Boston for conference in December.
It’s Boston that’s troubling me most of all. I realized, as I walked home that I know very little about my own country, much less continent. I’ve spent so much of my life looking for ways to use my passport that I have barely looked within our borders. I suppose that I shouldn’t so much look at this time in my life to get out and see the world, as a time to look at home. I’d like to move abroad for a few years, maybe find a grad school or a job overseas, and with all that focus, it’s turning the U.S. into the exotic.
So I’ll go to Boston in December for a few days, and then I’ll come home to manage the problems I’ll inevitably be handling then. And I’ll be spending the remainder of that break probably at home researching and planning for the next step. With any luck I’ll be in Greece for Spring Break. And throughout all of this, I begin to look for the places I don’t know. I always prided myself on my knowledge of different areas and cities in the States, but then are the moments where I realize I know entirely too little about some places. I think I shall have to remedy this.
