“The World is your Oyster,” my dad told me when I turned 18 and was about to start my first year at university; but what did it even mean? The world was mine for the taking, yet where was I supposed to begin? I could choose whichever life path took my fancy, but I was still playing laundry Jenga and eating baked beans out of the tin.
Every time I ponder about life and about how it will turn out, I get very sentimental about my childhood. I look back at the things that used to matter, things that seemed to be of pinnacle importance, that now, just don’t. “Will my friend be allowed to sleepover?” “Will dad let me go to the cinema?” “Will my crush EVER like me back?” (Who didn’t wonder that!?) Yet since getting to America, it’s been all about meeting new people and making the most out of this opportunity in order for it to make the utmost impact on my future. It represents the start of my adult life.
I don’t know about you, but I can’t see myself as the adult that society wants me to be, but I sense that here, in the great USA, it has all started to take shape. In America, I have had a freedom that I never used to have back at home. I’d never be able to make friends with the cookie delivery woman bringing ice cream to my door at 3 a.m. I’d never be confident enough to walk into a room full of people that I don’t know and be myself. Yet here in America, I’ve decided to make the most of everything that is right in front of me. I have found the person I’ve wanted to become since I was small starting to make her way into the world. I realise this all sounds very cliché, however it makes me think that change is necessary. Travel is necessary. But Beezers at 2 a.m.? No, that’s not so necessary…
Whether you know exactly what you want to achieve in life, or whether you are just broadening your horizons and going with the flow, grab it with all you’ve got. That’s my exchange student advice. If you want to become a doctor and help save lives, or even if you just wish you could be that person wearing the Cocky mascot outfit, do it! Pluck up the courage to do those things you want to do, but never did because you were too nervous about what the people around you would think. Do things for you and no one else. I have done just that since starting my exchange programme and I have never been so relieved with my decision to go out and get it! Even if that does mean getting a Beezers at 2 a.m.! (I’m not guilty at all). As Shakespeare once said (perhaps not in these exact words) the world really is your Oyster, and if he believed it, then so can I!
