I am planning to study abroad next semester in Granada, Spain. This decision was made fairly recently. At the beginning if this semester I had no intention of studying abroad so soon. But as I thought more about it next semester seemed to be the only option for me.

As some of you know I am in the marching band here at Umass. The band here is an enormous part of my life. I knew I didn’t want to miss fall semester, because that would mean missing band. I knew I didn’t want to go senior year, because there are a lot of important things that I wouldn’t want to miss. Many people suggested going on a short winter or summer study abroad program. I ruled this out because of financial reasons. If I went during the winter or summer, I would be paying for an extra semester of school. Whereas with fall and spring I would just be replacing a semester at Umass with a semester abroad. That left the spring semester of my second and third year here. As I entered this semester, I assumed it was too late to sign up to study abroad the very next semester. But as the date approached, I realized that next semester made the most sense for me and my studies.

In order to gain insight into how I chose my program, you need to know a little about me and my dad. My dad is an extremely aware person. Some might call him paranoid. He just is always aware of the risks of different situations. One concern he had with me traveling was the danger of being in a big city. Criminals target large crowded places with lots of people. I understood his concern, so that ruled out the big city schools. He also voiced his concern about the safety issues of being in South America. After being sufficiently scared by him, we were left with small cities in Spain. We looked through study abroad brochures and the API Granada program stuck out. It had everything I wanted in terms of classes. It wasn’t a big city like Madrid or Barcelona. The price was reasonable. I had always wanted to go to Spain, so it worked out.

I hope to gain a lot from my study abroad experience, one obvious thing being improvement in language skills. From what I hear from classmates who have been there, the accent is extremely difficult to decipher. Hopefully by the end of my time there I will be much more attuned to Spanish speakers in general and the small differences of each dialect.

I also hope to become more independent. I am extremely dependent on my family and my friends that I have made here at UMass. It will be difficult not being able to drive home when I miss my family or hang out with my friends when I get stressed. Hopefully I will learn how to deal with things on my own. And hopefully I will make friends in Spain that I will be able to go to with problems.