My experience has been a complete mix of total enjoyment and challenging adjustments along the way. I have never been faced with so much possibility, whilst also needing to use my time wisely to maximize my time abroad. This meant deciding which places I should travel to within my time in Europe, but also what sentence makes the most sense to use when speaking to the local pharmacist in order to get the right medication. It is a very stimulating thing to move to a new place, and even more so to another country, and more so when said country doesn’t speak your native tongue. Safe to say I was extremely stimulated this past semester with a new country and a different language that needed to be regularly used.

I can see my growth in many different aspects of myself. I come back to this often in my blog posts but I only do because of how much of a change I have come to see. The most prominent growth I have faced personally has been my independence and how much I truly have enjoyed being independent, whether that be in making these many trips alone or making many decisions based off what makes me most comfortable and what I will truly enjoy most. Academically and professionally, I have grown more confident in my methods and have grown to enjoy including my voice on group decisions and the the best way to go about a project.

Ultimately, I look forward to sharing a lot of the experiences and skills that I have obtained while abroad when I return home. One of the most important takeaways from my trip was that you must be comfortable being uncomfortable and being humbled by your experiences. So many times I was uncomfortable and fumbled over my sentences or just entirely blanked on the necessary French word in my sentence, but it was the moments that I acknowledged how normal it was to do this that I felt most successful. This takeaway I believe will stick with me for the remainder of my college career at Pitt while also as I move forward in my education and career.