Do Something Extraordinary
BY KARDELEN KALA (TRIN/PREP)
kala@ug.bilkent.edu.tr
Last year, while my peers at Bilkent were tackling either BUSEL or their majors, I boarded a plane headed for the other side of the world, namely to the oft-overlooked, shamefully under-mentioned land of Bolivia, fully intending to stay there for eleven months.
I am one of them, you see, an exchange student. You know them, the crazy ones who can wriggle out of anything, because "Perdon señor, pero no soy de aquí. No se entiendo!" I am among the ones who lived in the extreme for a short while. Exchangers live anything extremely. Every feeling you may have is enhanced by a thousand by the fact that you are so far away from everything you have ever known. This goes both ways. You party excessively, but come home and cry through the night as well, often all in a single day.
People told me before I left that I wasn't going to be able to recognize myself upon return. This, and I can't stress it enough, is extremely true. It is impossible not to change on exchange, when you are tested everyday by new challenges and problems. You may get extremely sick on a trip you'd been waiting for months (true story, I couldn't leave the house for a week on the vacation I had been planning hour by hour); you may be left in an unknown airport in some strange country (almost true, for future reference, land crews of Latin American airlines can NOT speak English); you may have to sit through geography in a language you don't speak at all (too true!); or you may simply get homesick and can't find someone to hold you. The key is that you survive. Nobody dies of despair, despite what old romance stories would have us believe. No, you reach the end of the tunnel and you emerge victorious. This is powerful stuff. Think about it.
I had (more than) my share of problems while I was in Bolivia. The isolation of the country I picked, the ridiculous distance, both physical and cultural, was a huge problem in and of itself, but believe me when I say that I have been through worse. The point is, however, now that I look back from the other side, I don't regret a minute of it. I lost a year of classroom time, decidedly putting myself behind all the people my age currently studying at Bilkent. My Spanish classes are messing with my head, which is somewhat of a problem considering that I am in French prep, hopefully on my way to study English-French translation as a job. This is all true. But now I can say that I have taken a trans-Atlantic flight. I stayed in multiple hostels, some without running water and a particularly memorable one that was -10 C inside. I have been 4000 m high, 700 m underground (in a cave!). I met and actually became good friends with someone from Greenland, an authentic Inuit fisherman, for God's sake, top that!
So, if there's even the slightest possibility that you can go on exchange, stop reading, drop everything right now. Do it. And do something I didn't - choose your destination wisely, considering your character and interests. Don't expect to find a family away from home, as go the stories. This happens to the majority, but not everyone. Don't expect perfection, but expect a unique experience. Do it. Come thank me later.