Women Abroad
Morgyn is in her 2nd year at The Women's College, studying International and Global Studies at Sydney Uni and preparing to go on exchange to Mexico later in the year...
Blog Entries
Preparing for an Exchange
March, 2010
When someone mentions the possibility of an exchange, your mind instantly jumps to the wildly exciting aspects; a colourful new culture, fantastic food and a whole bunch of crazy adventures. Unfortunately, people rarely introduce the idea of an exchange with the tagline:
“Ever wanted the opportunity to gain an intimate knowledge of the course catalogue of another uni simply so you can pick four courses that may or may not actually be on offer and attempt to convince Sydney uni that they should let you count these ephemeral courses towards your degree? With an exchange you can do this AND juggle your uni work so you don’t fail and get kicked out of the exchange program AS WELL AS suppress your increasing nausea as you watch the exploding prices of those flights you can’t book until an undetermined point in the future when you might find out that you are actually going on exchange!”
Sitting here with an arm full of expensive typhoid, hepatitis A and yellow fever trying to decide whether malaria pills or accommodation are more important, it sure doesn’t seem quite as alluring as when I first started the application process last October. I am, at least, taking solace in the fact that I’m doing these preparations now, in March, rather than in June when I’m scheduled to leave. And having just gone through the vaccinations, the scholarship applications and the donation of thousands of my precious dollars to Qantas’ ailing executives, my advice to anyone considering exchange would be: “make sure you are damn-well organised”.
However, as much time and energy as the bureaucracy takes up, it is not what occupies my thoughts most. When I think about my approaching exchange, I think about how good my Mexican host family will be at cooking. I think about how beautiful it will be on a beach in Ecuador where I’m taking Spanish lessons. And I think about the children I’m going to be looking after in a Mexican orphanage and their mischievous smiles after they’ve pulled some horrendous prank on me.
I may sound cynical and jaded when talking about the process of applying for exchange, but it’s all with the aim of making sure it runs as smoothly as possible, and I never ever lose sight of why I’m doing it. I don’t kid myself into believing that the actual exchange won’t include a decent amount of frustration, homesickness and embarrassing language and cultural barriers. But whatever happens, I’m positive that as long as I keep a decent sense of humour about it all, recognise the good things and appreciate the amazing opportunity I have, I’ll look back and be glad for every little bit. Well, apart from the bits I can’t remember courtesy of the Mexican national drink.