I think I gained valuable transferable skills throughout my study abroad experience from both taking courses in a foreign country and traveling on the weekends. Some of the most important skills I gained/improved upon are problem-solving and adaptability. When you are studying abroad, there are many times when things do not go completely according to plan, so you have to be able to adapt to changing circumstances. Most of my weekend trips went very smoothly but one time, my roommate and I found out our flight was canceled right as we got to the airport and because she had a Zoom class at a certain time, we needed to take an earlier flight to make sure she could still log on to her class when we landed. This meant we had about 15 or 20 minutes to check-in, get through security, and get to our gate if we wanted to make the flight. While this situation was obviously not the end of the world, it definitely taught me to remain calm in unpredictable situations and focus on figuring out solutions to a problem quickly and efficiently without getting overwhelmed.

Another important transferable skill I learned was time management. One of the issues I ran into while I was abroad was balancing my courses with exploring Sydney and traveling on the weekends. While my course load was not particularly difficult, I think it was sometimes easy to get behind on my coursework simply because of everything else going on. I had to remind myself that while I was given the incredible opportunity to explore another country, studying was still a very important part of the experience as well.

Finally, some transferable skills I learned in the classroom were teamwork and communication. I had a few group projects throughout the semester that required communication between myself and my classmates, some of whom were from different universities other than Pitt. Therefore, everyone had slightly different ways of working, which made communication more important. Overall though, it was nice to get other students’ perspectives and approaches to learning/working on group projects and I feel like I learned a lot from the experience.