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Initial Thoughts: Maryland
I noticed that I have the habit to compare new places with the place I am familiar with. This includes Manchester where I have been living for 3 years. Maryland is so strikingly different from Manchester.
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all good things come to an end
It’s nearly the end of August, and I’ve been back in the UK for about three months now. Although I feel like I’ve adjusted back to life here pretty well, there are still mornings when I’ll wake up, and realise that I’m no longer sharing a room with my roommate. The past few weeks have been quite hard, as the university term has just started at Mizzou, so my Snapchat, Instagram and Facebook are filled with photos of the campus, and of nights out in Columbia’s bars and clubs posted by all the friends I made there. As much as I love being back in England, with all the little…
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Summer travels, or the reason I need a job
By Rhiannon Jones (University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, USA) Our time at Illinois had finished. Finals were done with, emotional goodbyes were had and we had a month left on our visas before we got deported from the country. We were heading to the West Coast. The initial planning wasn’t the laid-back ‘Cali’ lifestyle that the trip itself promised. With seven of us to book flights, hostels, car hire, coaches and entrance tickets for, a month to remember started out more as an exercise in herding cats. Thankfully someone more organised than me was fluent in Google Docs and the phrase “check the spreadsheet’ became a mantra, chanted back at you…
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End of exchange reflections (penned somewhere over the Atlantic Ocean when I really should have been trying to sleep)
By Elizabeth Pace (Chemistry, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, USA) So 10 months later and I’m permanently back in the land of real bacon, correct spellings, day/month/year and people who know how to make a proper cup of tea (I’ve had 12 already). For my final blog, instead of getting all sappy and emotional about how amazing this year has been I thought I’d finish off by sharing some of the worldly wisdom I’ve acquired since August. Here are a few of my top tips and insider hints for studying abroad at the University of Illinois, navigating the USA in general, and for all of those things you think will…
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Spring Break Travels (or Cuba: Fun yet Maddeningly Frustrating)
By Elizabeth Pace (Chemistry, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, USA) “Fun but maddeningly frustrating” is the line used to describe Cuba on the back of the Lonely Planet Guide and by the end of our second day in the country, it had pretty much become our mantra for the trip. If you’d asked me a year ago where I thought I’d be spending my spring break while on exchange in the USA I’d probably have said Mexico, or Florida, or some other typical location known for its beaches and partying. Then one day someone mentioned off-hand, “Guys, wouldn’t it be hilarious if we went to Cuba for spring break?”. I’ll…
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Academic differences between Manchester and Mizzou
by Victoria Rowlands – Sociology. (The University of Missouri – Columbia, USA) Now that I am 2 months into my time here at Mizzou, I feel like now is a good time to talk about the academic differences between here and Manchester. Spring break is in two weeks, and me and a bunch of the other Manchester students, along with some of our other friends, are headed to Miami for a week! I’m so excited, we honestly need the week off uni! Before I came here, I was under the impression that there wouldn’t be that much work, and that I’d be gallivanting off to far flung corners of the…
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Semester Two Update (or its midterm season again so seems like the perfect time to start writing another blog)
By Elizabeth Pace (Chemistry, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, USA) I’m now five weeks into my second semester here at UIUC, so it’s probably a good a time as any to talk a bit about what it’s like being back on campus, what I’ve been up to so far, what’s different about this semester and what’s very much the same.
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Pre-departure Pep Talk
From where I am now, if I could give my pre-departure self a few words of encouragement and reassurance, they would go something like this… Everyone has an American Dream.
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Academic differences in the USA (because it’s not called “study” abroad for nothing)
By Elizabeth Pace (Chemistry, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, USA) So now that I’m officially half-way through my exchange and no longer in the midst of the panic and stress of final exams I thought it would be a good time to take a step back and talk about the actual “study” part of studying abroad.
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Thanksgiving Travels (or the real reason I went on study abroad in the first place)
By Elizabeth Pace (Chemistry, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, USA) So here it is. After 13 weeks, 8 midterms, 9 lab reports and countless homeworks and surprise quizzes we finally got a week off. Thanksgiving break; the first decent length of time I’ve had to escape Illinois and actually see some of the country I’ve been living in for the past three months. As any of you who are friends with me on Facebook, Instagram or Snapchat will know I definitely made the most of the (much needed) time off as me and a couple of other fellow Brits set off on an East coast adventure I like to call…
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Arrival reflections (how temporary housing turned out to be the best thing to ever happen to me)
By Elizabeth Pace (Chemistry, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, USA) Actually that’s not totally true but I’ll get to that later…
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Reflections on my time abroad
By Olivia Stevens (Wellesley College, USA) I can not believe it has been a year since I finished my time at Wellesley. It has flown by faster than I would ever have imagined. Before I had even started at Manchester I knew I wanted to study abroad. In fact, the huge range of places on offer was a large factor in my decision to come here. Having gone through the experience, and having time to reflect on it more, I can safely say that studying abroad was one of the best decisions I have ever made. It may sound clichéd but it is so true! Getting on a plane and…
A study abroad journal by students, for students.
