*deep breath*
I'm so glad I can finally talk about this - it's taken a very long time to have everything confirmed, but now it's definite, apart from getting my visa approved, so I can talk about it without worrying that something will go wrong.
My university runs exchanges with various universities so students can spend their 3rd year (of a 4 year course) studying abroad. While it seems like a long list of places that you can choose from to go to, there's a lot of competition for the spots. I've always thought I'd like to study abroad, either for a term or a year, but when I'd started looking in to it, I'd originally decided not to apply to anywhere in the USA because I thought it would be too expensive & I didn't think I had the grades or CV to compete with the hundreds of other people who wanted to go. I would apply for a place at one of the European universities, which were much more affordable and had more spaces available. You don't pay tuition on exchange, mind you - that's where the exchange part comes in - but accommodation alone anywhere seems much more expensive than in Scotland.
But then it got to time to apply and I had another look at the European places, and realised there weren't many that offered my course in english, so I thought, what the heck, I won't loose anything by trying, and picked out the 5 international places I wanted to apply for. I also noticed that, of the 2 places offered for Edinburgh university students, one was specifically for someone studying classics. It went to the top of my list.
December roles around, and I get an email from the study abroad office saying I've got a place! I read the email, and sort of wandered around the flat in a daze. My hands were actually shaking for a good hour afterwards.
Cue a couple of months of tension as I try to figure out things like whether I can do camp as well as study abroad (yes, just), how that's going to work with visas (it's awkward) and whether they were going to turn around and go 'hey your grades aren't good enough, we made a mistake!' (They almost did - UNC asked for an extra reference, and all is now good.)
So it's now official! I've also spent the last few weeks torn between "ohmygosh going to North Carolina for a year so cool squee!" and "A year is an awfully long time and how can I just leave everyone and my family for so long? Maybe I should just not do it?" So I'm looking forward to it, a lot, and I think it'll be amazing, but it's also quite scary. I know I can skype with my parents & friends. But it's just not the same as getting to sleep in your home bed once in a while & have hugs from parents.
I'm glad that I can talk about this now. I didn't want to get really excited about it and then for something to go wrong, but now, it's really happening! :D
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