UCL student Catrin Manning shares advice for a Year Abroad.

You’ve completed two years of university and now you’re off in search of a new challenge; A Year Abroad! You may have already planned out every detail, or maybe you’re wondering where to start. Fear not, here are my top tips for surviving and thriving on your year abroad.

Plan. Plan. Plan.

Give yourself the best possible start to your year abroad and do your planning and research thoroughly.

Firstly, you need to decide where you want to go. This decision might be influenced by a language you study, a link to a particular area, or perhaps you just want to move as far away as you can! I study Spanish and Russian, so for my first semester I decided to go to Granada, since I had heard good things about the Russian department there, and it was close to the Sierra Nevada ski resort. This was quite important for me since I’m a competitive snowboard racer. When deciding where you want to go, decide what your priorities are. Do you want to be in a big city, or a rural area? Is the university’s reputation important? Will you want to continue any hobbies or sports whilst abroad, can you find these in your chosen destination?

Once you’ve chosen your destination, make sure to also research the logistics. Will you need a visa, what is the process? How will you get there, can you fly or take a train? What are the average living costs, will you have enough to cover rent and expenses? How will you manage if you don’t speak the language, do they offer classes?

Improvise. Adapt.

It’s no secret that moving to a new country can be different to life at home, and it probably won’t always be smooth sailing. Part of the experience is learning to adapt to a new culture and finding solutions to problems.

In my experience, the best way to adapt to Spanish culture was to go out and explore the city of Granada. I learnt a lot about the traditional habits, such as what times people eat or how they greet each other simply by being out and about. I also learnt about the Spanish university system and the way things are taught by attending my classes and engaging with the work. You may find that things are completely different somewhere else.

Overcome

You may have a lot of different emotions whilst on your year abroad, and homesickness could be one of them. It can be hard to move to a completely new place, but it’s important to get stuck in and make the most of your time somewhere new. A lot of cities will have a student network, and organisation that put on trips for foreign students, which is a great way to explore and make friends. I took one of these trips to Morocco and made some great friends along the way. It was nice to be able to share experiences and advice with one another, since we were all foreign students studying in Granada.

It can also be useful to speak with friends and family back home, be it a phone call or Facetime perhaps. It can be reassuring to see a familiar face and catch up about what’s going on back home. I decided to take a weekend trip back to London to catch up with some friends and have some of that familiarity back for a few days.

You can’t plan for every single detail; things might go wrong and that’s ok. At times you’ll need to improvise and adapt, but in my experience, it’ll make you a stronger, more resilient person. There’s no one right way to do a year abroad, so just enjoy the experience!

UCL student Dylan Ngan shares how they transitioned to living in London from overseas.

When I first strolled around the UCL campus, those steps were of many firsts. It was my first time in the UK, my first in London and marked the beginning of my university education. Without a doubt, it is going to be one of many firsts for you too. It might be the case that this is the first time you’ve been this far away from home. Hopefully, by sharing some experiences and some things that have worked for myself and others in similar circumstances, it’ll ease the nerves and uncertainties of starting your journey here.

One of the more common concerns before starting the term is the feeling of being overwhelmed by what seems to be a significant amount of admin. There are certainly many documents and tasks to get in order, living arrangements, visas, getting used to a new place and routine. Apart from organising and time management, one of the first things to address is that it will be quite hectic finding your bearings in a new environment. It would be worth spending some time locating several places that will become part of your weekly routine. For instance, simply knowing where your local supermarkets are, shops for stationary , cooking and food utensils, or simply getting to know where your favourite coffee and pastries will be. For us international students especially, we searched for places where we could get a taste of home. It occurred to us quite early on, that although experiencing new cuisines and cultures are an essential part of being somewhere new, from time to time, we indulge in a little nostalgic gustatory trip down our memories again.

Apart from the fundamentals, there comes the greatest challenge of all. Being far away from home is perhaps one of the more difficult things to get used to. A part of what we miss is the inherent atmosphere of being in a shared space of activity, an unspoken bond of a similar culture, language and identity. Uncertainty of what is new may come from having to learn and adapt with certain social rules. That uncertainty, that invisible gap of things not feeling quite right, constitutes what many would call being homesick. For most of us, we have found a combination of two things that helped. One, was to remain in touch with friends and family from home. Consequently, being in a new place has helped some of us find a deeper appreciation for those we love and care about. The second is do and see more. You will make new friends, some will be in a similar situation as yourself, some will have grown up here. These friends can empathise and share your journey as well as guiding you towards assimilating and comprehending a new cultural environment. Embracing new experiences, new people may be uncomfortable at first, but they will help you grow. Have faith in yourself and others, there are helpers all around us, you got this!