In 2016, I decided to study in New York City – on a campus I had never visited in a country I had only visited once before.<\/p>\n
Looking back, I don\u2019t remember exactly why I made that decision. I had little experience living or traveling outside of my home country, South Africa, and I had no real inclination to live in the U.S. I did, however, have a drive to experience a world beyond my current frame of reference, and was excited by the prospect of discovering more about myself by living in an entirely new city.<\/p>\n
Since then, my time abroad has played a crucial role in my personal and social development, and I have grown in ways I couldn\u2019t possibly have imagined for myself in 2016. A few years later, I embarked on the dreaded journey towards adulthood as I began to consider my career after college. While I had a vague sense of the type of work I want to do, I felt far from ready to commit to one job and the lifestyle that goes with it. Once again, I hoped that experiencing a new culture would provide me with powerful insights into who I am and I what I want from life. And so, I decided to study abroad in a new new city: London.<\/p>\n
Nonetheless, my first few weeks in London were far from ideal. As a South African applying for a British student visa from the United States, I had to jump through a near endless series of hoops before setting foot on English soil. And once I had finally made my way to London, I quickly learned that surviving in this city would be a daily act of budgeting bravura. Moving money from South Africa to my pocket through an American bank account would take well over a week, and I couldn\u2019t afford to waste any money as I was setting up my new room. Strangely enough, these small hurdles reminded me of my first days in New York. The sea of admin and red tape I found myself in was completely uncharted, but I knew that I had navigated similar waters before. The problems were new, but the stress was the same.<\/p>\n
Ultimately, I came to realize that living in a new country will always come with a unique set of unexpected hoops and hurdles. But that\u2019s only a small part of a greater experience which will surely develop you in new and unexpected ways. With that in mind, I felt ready to take on my second round of studying abroad.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
In 2016, I decided to study in New York City – on a campus I had never visited in a country I had only visited once before.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":600,"featured_media":368,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18,4],"tags":[142,143,112,140,117,141,109],"class_list":["post-367","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-excellence-scholarships","category-incomingstudents","tag-budgeting","tag-columbia-university","tag-excellence-scholarship","tag-immigration","tag-kings-college-london","tag-south-africa","tag-study-abroad","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kcl.ac.uk\/kingssas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/367","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kcl.ac.uk\/kingssas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kcl.ac.uk\/kingssas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kcl.ac.uk\/kingssas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/600"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kcl.ac.uk\/kingssas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=367"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kcl.ac.uk\/kingssas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/367\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":369,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kcl.ac.uk\/kingssas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/367\/revisions\/369"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kcl.ac.uk\/kingssas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/368"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kcl.ac.uk\/kingssas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=367"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kcl.ac.uk\/kingssas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=367"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kcl.ac.uk\/kingssas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=367"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}