how studying abroad taught me more about life than any classroom could.
For most of university, you always have a plan. A course outline tells you what is coming next, deadlines tell you where you should be, and grades give you a pretty clear idea of how you are doing.
Then I moved to Milan for four months.
I spent a semester studying at Bocconi University in Milan, Italy. While I obviously went there to study, some of the most valuable parts of the experience happened nowhere near a classroom.
Living in Milan gave me a level of independence that is hard to recreate when you are surrounded by everything familiar. I had to adjust to a new city, new university, new people, new language, new routine… pretty much new everything. Things that seemed simple at home suddenly required figuring out. “Okay, so the bianchi setting is for the white clothes, right?… Okay, okay, bye Mom, thanks.” But over time, that unfamiliarity became one of my favourite parts of the experience.
During those four months abroad, I visited 13 countries and 27 cities. Some trips were planned weeks in advance, while others came together frighteningly quickly. Apparently, all you need is a cheap flight and questionable levels of confidence! I saw places I had wanted to visit for years, like Paris, France. I ended up in countries I never expected to see, such as Malta, and had experiences that would have been impossible if I had stayed completely inside my normal routine.
But what stayed with me most was not necessarily how many places I visited.
It was realizing how much you learn when nobody is giving you instructions!
Travel forces you to make decisions, adapt when things go wrong, communicate with people who may not speak the same language, manage your time and money, and become comfortable being somewhere unfamiliar. I’ll never forget the first time I stepped out of the metro in Vienna, Austria. Everything was written in German; nothing looked familiar, nothing sounded familiar, and I was wide-eyed with a sense of impending doom. Over time, that doom turned into excitement as what was once intimidating was now something I looked forward to. Was I suddenly fluent in German? Nein. But I was definitely more confident thinking on my feet. Now…there is no grade attached to that, but that does not make the learning any less real!
Before going on exchange, I thought of university largely in terms of what we are taught to prioritize: classes, internships, extracurriculars, and preparing for whatever comes next. Don’t get me wrong, all of those things matter, but living abroad changed the way I think about what makes a university experience valuable.
Some experiences matter because they make you more independent. Others change your perspective, introduce you to people you never would have met otherwise, push you outside of your comfort zone, or become memories you will talk about for years to come.
One of the biggest things I learned from living in Milan was that constantly trying to make the “right” choice can sometimes stop you from having experiences at all. Some of the moments I remember most came from saying yes before I knew exactly how everything would work out. My trip to Edinburgh was the first solo trip I had ever taken. Was I scared to take the leap? Yes. Would I have missed out on the experience if I hadn’t gone? Yes. That ended up being exactly why I was glad I went.
That does not mean I came back with everything figured out. If anything, studying abroad made me realize how much there still is to figure out.
But I think that is part of the value.
University gives us a lot of structure, and it can become easy to believe that life is supposed to work the same way: follow the right steps, make the right choices, and eventually arrive at the right answer.
Living abroad showed me that some of life’s best parts happen when there is no obvious next step.
That idea is a big part of why I created Off the Syllabus. I care about school and planning for the future. Still, I also want to pay attention to everything happening around those things: the trips, friendships, interests, risks, unexpected opportunities, and ordinary moments that end up shaping us just as much.
A syllabus can tell you what you need to know for the exam. But it cannot tell you which city you’ll fall in love with, which person you will meet at exactly the right time, which wrong turn will become a great story, or which experience will completely change the way you see your life.
Sometimes the most valuable lessons are the ones you never knew you were supposed to learn.
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