What would you like to tell (and show) an Aggie who is considering taking a CIBS study abroad in Italy. What would they hear, what would they see, what would they experience? – Reece Maywald

It will be scary at first. You will be hesitant because you are scared of being so far from home, you are worried you won’t make any friends, and you feel like you can get the full college experience without it. And let me tell you, you aren’t wrong. It is so nerve racking being 5,000 miles from home, you meet your roommates for the first time in a taxi leaving the airport, and you are texting your people back home that everything moves so differently here. You just have the worst feeling in the pit of your stomach, and you are scared you may be in way over your head. But then you meet as a class for the first time and you start to meet your peers. Then, as the days go on you slowly go from strangers to friends. You go on weekend trips together, you eat so much food together, and you probably stay up way to late the night before an exam together. You get to see so many historic landmarks and experience so many once in a lifetime opportunities together, and you soon forget the distance between you and everything back home. The next thing you know, just as you were experiencing all the firsts, you start to go through all the lasts; last meal together, last class together, last gelato walk together, and last time seeing each other before we go back home. That same pit feeling you had in your stomach whenever you first arrived is back, but now it’s for a different reason. Instead of feeling the fear of the unknown, you feel the heavy heart of not wanting to leave. The streets of a foreign country far away now hold so many memories. You have to say goodbye to your favorite spots and people that run them; the people that made this unknown space a home away from home. So as I sit in the airport, awaiting our flight back home, I am so at peace and grateful for what the past month brought me and for everything that it has taught me. The lessons learned and the friendships made can’t be reciprocated on a normal college campus. So as I sit in the airport, waiting to board my flight, the biggest takeaway I can share to anyone considering study abroad is to just do it. It will change your life, it will change you, and you are so much better off for having done it.