Education Abroad in Eastern Europe

My STEP Signature Project was an Education Abroad trip looking at architecture throughout Eastern Europe for a month. From 7 AM to around 6 PM, we would wander around the city we were in and sketch or discuss the history and details of specific buildings around the area. The idea of the trip involved being able to experience vast multitudes of architectural times and styles, so the group would never stay in a single area for too long before we would move to the next.

Throughout my trip, I learned so much about both myself and what I thought was the world around me. Of myself, I think I learned the most. I returned from the trip feeling ultimately both vastly the same but also incomparably different. Nothing truly had changed about me, except the slightly more-yellow hue of my Grecian-sun-kissed skin. However I came back feeling unprepared for returning to my life, full of ideas and wonders and wishes. Before I went, I wanted to change the world. After I got back, I was ready to help it. I came back more energy efficient, more eco-friendly, and more determined to better myself along with my goals.

As for the world, being a landscape architect, I was already conscious of human impact on the environment. But experiencing the true love and appreciation of nature that the Europeans demonstrated, it made me realize how much more I could do. I didn’t want to change everything anymore, I wanted to fix it and better it and restore it to all its glory. Most of all, I came back more appreciative of my major. I truly felt that where I was, my impact could be made.

I came back from Europe an aspiring vegetation. I say aspiring, because all my life I had eaten meat and known nothing but, developing both an increasingly picky appetite and a grand love for steak, which makes it extremely hard to commit fully to. This was the big realization I had that Europe had changed me. Meat was such a central focus of my food life, that when I decided to cut it from my life completely, I knew Europe had affected me in ways I wasn’t even conscious of.

I remember looking at the other students in the trip, filled with enthusiasm over the permeable paved parking lots. I don’t believe any one person could be so happy seeing thick bushels of grass and invasive weeds peeking through the cracks of pedestrian streets. To this day, when people ask about qualities of Europe that I found profusely more pleasing than here, I speak of the fields of wild dandelions and purple asters that littered each and every lawn as if they lived there side by side. The Germans spoke of nature like a child speaks of their hero: full of love, appreciation, and respect. Being able to witness and experience these strong feelings seemingly transformed my entire image of life.

It was weird, coming back from Europe. While I was there, I often thought of my life back home and honestly, at times missed it for the world. But when I got back, it seemed like a fully disparate universe. Everything was the same, and yet it wasn’t. I had never wanted to be back in a place more than I did the day I woke up in my bed, in Ohio, just relaxing. I missed the constant commerce and bustle and go-go-go vibes. As the phrase goes, you never truly know what you have until it’s gone.

This was an extremely valuable change for my life. I had never felt this connected with my major besides the second I decided to choose it. I didn’t just want to perform my job extremely well, I wanted to LIVE it. I was moved and filled with such passion that it frustrated me to come to terms with how little influence I currently had. My career had always been about me. It was stressed from the very beginning of my life to go into a field that would fill me with happiness. But it wasn’t just me involved anymore. Now, it was every interaction possible that i wanted to create. I think this is the true power of loving what you do.

As such, the “transformative experience” promised on the participation on this trip occurred in so many levels that I can’t even begin to explain in a simple u.osu post. Perhaps I will make a change one day and be able to write a book with more clarity and less useless rambling. But what i felt and lived during this study abroad was one that i will never be able to forget.