Today I will embark on the biggest journey of my entire life. I will leave the comfort of England; its little rivers, rugged coastline, and old cities left behind for the great expanse that is the United States of America. I will begin my academic year at the University of Virginia, studying abroad for almost ten months and exploring all the States (and maybe even further afield) has to offer.
The road to the beginning of this journey has involved a great amount of preparation. I cannot believe that it was almost a year ago when I started to research universities in North America where I could go on a junior honours year abroad and a little after that, began applying to the University of Glasgow International Exchange Programme. This sounds a lot easier than it actually was; balancing university and a (relatively) busy social life, whilst applying to the UVa is (as I quickly discovered), actually quite hard. Would-be international exchangers be warned: its one thing to dream about studying abroad but an entirely different thing to get it done.
The academic year passed faster than I would have liked. All that reading, writing and examining was done with in a flash. After what seemed an age (mainly due to the somewhat less satisfactory UofG organisational capabilities) I got my results for my exams sometime in June; I had more than achieved the grades to get into honours and had got confirmation that I was on the exchange programme.
This next bit is a little boring so I’ll try to keep it relatively concise. After getting on to the programme at UVa, I began to complete more application to get there. The most important of these was my visa application. Now, I knew that the US didn’t make it easy to get in to the country but I never imagined it would have been as hard as it has been. Once I completed the initial application (which takes upwards of 2 hours), completed the SEVIS application and I was finally able to organise an interview in the embassy for my visa. This turned out to be in London, 300 miles away from where I live. So, I went down to The Big Smoke – it was hot, busy and expensive but I managed to get my visa (after a 5 hour wait in a boiling room full of people) with not many problems. Although this was a little bit tedious, I have to admit visiting a good friend and spending some time exploring the capital was actually pretty great. With that finished, it was just a case of organising insurance, health documents and accommodation.
In sum, for anyone still reading at this point or for those who couldn’t be bothered to read the last few paragraphs, everything has now been completed and I’m all set for the next year. I’ll be living ‘on Grounds’ at the International Residential College; a residence made up of students from all around the world. I’ve got all my documents, chosen my courses for English Literature and have begun packing.
All I need to do is get there now.
For anyone interested, I will be posting blogs like this hopefully every week, attempting to document the life of an Englishman abroad studying at a very American university. So keep on reading for discovery, stress, and (hopefully) some good times on the way.
If you have any questions about my experiences, studying abroad or anything else for that matter get in contact with me on here or via some other medium i.e email, Twitter, or (when I’ve set it up properly) YouTube.
Until next time,
Matthew
Matthew Taylor 