Rainy Days and Dealing with FOMO: The Art of Solo Dates

By Isabelle Henaghan, University of Toronto Mississauga, Canada

Choosing to do a year abroad can be daunting for many reasons. You might end up reeling pros and cons lists on your notes app on the 142 as you reach closer to the acceptance or referral deadline with My Placement. But whether you had premeditated the concern of feeling alone or not, I am confident that it is a feeling that almost everyone experiences during the exchange.

Doing a year abroad is one of the best decisions I have made for myself. I have absolutely loved meeting so many new people from all over the world, and I have found the exchange community some of the most accepting and friendly bunch of people. It is almost a guarantee that you will find people out here that you can gel with and explore your new home with. However, most of the personal development that I have experienced has been channeled through my solo dates. I place a lot of value on these periods of alone time. Sometimes I choose them over going out with friends and sometimes it feels as though there is no choice. Argubly the times when there isn’t a choice to be alone can be the most productive.

It is no lie that your friends back at home will graduate together, or worse, they’ll coin a new inside joke on a night in Northern Quarter! It is easy to feel as though you are missing out, but to me, this is the most indicative way of showing growth. The ability to miss your friends but also to realise that in this moment you’re choosing you. It becomes an almost meditative ritual, helping you process your own values and reflect upon habits which you may have adopted from exchange friends. Space from the UK and everything I had known allowed me to be more critical of the values which I had blindly been following. Seeing how other people socialised, communicated, studied, enabled me to look beyond the british bubble and pick-and-choose the values I wanted to bring into my own life. I can pick up the coffee culture which I enjoy so much from my European friends. And the autonomous individuality which drives North American ‘success’. Don’t get me wrong, I still love British pub culture, and you will indeed find me back at the Friendship Inn in no time, but knowing that it’s not the only way to socialise allows me to be a bit more critical of the optional norms that we have adopted into our society.

So with that being said, if you are reading this as a prospective study abroad student who is nervous about feeling a bit alone out there, don’t worry! That’s why you must do it. Be comfortable with being by yourself for a bit.

And if you are out on the exchange already but feeling a bit low, take yourself for a coffee. Get out of the house and notice all the other people also sat there on their own. Some are reading, some are working, some are just watching the world go by. Being alone in a new place isn’t a failure, it’s part of the experience. Those quiet moments are often when you notice the most, think the most, and grow the most.