I’ve never been much of a traveler or that adventurous a person, and I had things I didn’t want to miss back home like the football team, friends, and my girlfriend. But that all changed when my older brother went abroad when I was a freshman.

Christopher Levine,  Economics and Strategy Major, class of 2015, shares his semester abroad experience.

For any students reading this I am certain that on every campus tour you took before deciding to commit to Wash U. you were told about the amount of study abroad programs available to you. This makes sense, study abroad has become a much more popular thing to do these days and it seems like my Facebook is always flooded with friends’ pictures from their own study abroad adventures. I, however, always ignored that part of the campus tour.

I’ve never been much of a traveler or that adventurous a person, and I had things I didn’t want to miss back home like the football team, friends, and my girlfriend. But that all changed when my older brother went abroad when I was a freshman. The thought that this might be my only chance – maybe in my lifetime – to go to a foreign country and to live there for five months became a reality.

So it was settled then right? I was going to go abroad and have the best semester of my life just like all of my friends had said when they returned home. But they weren’t kidding when they said how many programs you could actually participate in as a Wash U. student and I was again on the fence.

I knew I wanted to go to London because I could speak English, live in a big city, and the culture, mainly soccer, had really grown on me since going to college and my brother’s  return from Manchester.

The London Internship program is by far the most popular at Olin and I even had two friends that had participated in the past and enjoyed it. The problem was that I had heard this program is basically Wash U. in London, meaning you stay with your Wash U. classmates and don’t really interact with English people, especially students, like you would in other study abroad programs that were also available at Wash U. I went back and forth, weighing the pros and cons of each, and ultimately decided on the London Internship Program and I am very happy that I did.

Changing of the Guard at Buckingham Palace

As part of the European Olin Study Abroad programs, you travel to an assigned European Union member country and then meet up with everyone in Belgium for a crash course about the EU. This had to be one of the most rewarding experiences of my time abroad.

After an interview with a government official in Malta, I couldn’t stop thinking about how cool it was that with just one partner’s help, I had successfully set up an in-person interview with a significant Maltese official in the EU process.

I’ve since started my internship at one of the world’s most renowned soccer clubs and am in the process of completing the longest and most academic research paper of my life. I don’t want to compare my experience with anyone else’s, but I do know that when I return home I will be so proud of what I have accomplished.

I know the title of this blog begs a question that many college students face, but I cannot answer that question definitively. I have shared my feelings about my personal experience abroad hoping to give another perspective, but nobody can decide if studying abroad is right for you except yourself. It is a time for personal exploration and there is only one person who can decide if that is the right thing to do.