My Guide to Surviving Exchange - Alex Torgerson

I asked a few exchange friends to share some thoughts/advice/takeaways from exchange as we‘re approaching the halfway mark. This is my best friend Alex’s “guide to surviving exchange.” She is from Houston, Texas and is currently living in Milan, Italy. ————————-————————————————————————————————

MY GUIDE TO SURVIVING EXCHANGE…

As someone who almost went home on more than one occasion, I have a few pieces of advice for someone that is having a hard time or simply just preparing for their year abroad. As of this very moment that I'm writing this, I’m on my fifth month here in Milan, Italy. Right now I couldn't be more content but it wasn't always like that. In fact it was the exact opposite and I struggled for months. A lot of my problems were a result of my rotary club so I guess my first unofficial piece of advice for you is don't be in district 2041, and every single other student in my district can affirm that. I'm not going to delve into my hard times but instead share how I got through it and what kept me afloat. This is my personal survival guide but by no means is it the answer to all your struggles. Each person copes and deals in different ways and what worked for me won't necessarily work for you. At the end of the day you need to dive deep within yourself and figure out what it is that keeps you going. It takes a lot of strength and self-awareness to get yourself out of a bad mindset and no one else can tell you how to do it but yourself. Get to know yourself. Find out what makes you tick. Once you know, it will help you throughout the rest of your life. But without further adieu, here is me and how I survived exchange (or at least got to five months):

#1 DON’T COMPARE YOUR EXCHANGE WITH ANYONE ELSE’S: Not comparing yourself with others is hard, trust me I know. That's one of the biggest things I struggle with. But this is so, so important, especially in a weird experience like being an exchange student. With social media and being able to communicate with anyone at any time, you are constantly seeing what everyone else is doing. You're gonna see people who have it all: great host family, friends, perfect school, etc. But on the other hand there are people who have it way worse than you. So comparing yourself is pointless because there’s always gonna be someone better and there’s always gonna be someone worse. That’s life. It’s like that absolutely everywhere. Someone’s probably looking at you right now and wishing they had what you have, so just look at yourself and focus on what’s great about your life. Which leads me into tip number two.

#2 MAKE THE BEST OF YOUR SITUATION: Even if it means lying to yourself a little bit, find the things that are awesome about you and what you have. Make due with what you were dealt. You’re here in this situation right now so you might as well try to make it workout. And not to get all hippie but there’s a reason why you chose to do a year abroad and why you were placed where you were. Try to find out what it is that you are there to do or meant to learn. You’re exactly where you’re meant to be.

#3 TAKE IT ONE DAY AT A TIME: If I could ditch all the other tips and only keep one, it would be this. My dad told me this during my first week and I think this is the biggest reason that I'm still in Italy right now. I remember how hard it was at the beginning even just to get up in the morning. I kept telling my parents that I didn't know how I was going to get through ten months here. I was looking at way too big of a chunk at a time and worrying about things that hadn't even happened yet. So my dad said don’t think about ten months from now. Don’t think about four months or three months or two weeks or even two days from now. Each day just focus on that specific day. All you have is right now so tackle things as they come to you instead of stressing about stuff that might not even happen. When you reduce your view to only one day it makes everything monumentally easier. Cause you can get through today. The hardest part is just getting yourself out of bed. And then, before you know it, it’s been five months. I still tell myself this everyday.

#4 FILL YOUR SCHEDULE: Keep yourself occupied. Lowkey I think this was a way to escape my feelings and thoughts but it definitely helped. When you stay busy you have less time to sit and contemplate life. Instead you just go, go, go and try to fill every ounce of time with different activities. This is kind of a way of avoiding your problems deep down but sometimes you gotta do what you can to get by. I started by just saying yes to every opportunity that came my way. I would end up doing things from morning to evening, everyday of the week and never having a day of rest. Sometimes I would get a little exhausted and wish I had one day to just chill but then I realized that the constant stimulus was actually helping and making me happier. It was the times where I was alone, in my room, doing nothing that I felt the saddest and even something as simple as going for a walk can help.

#5 NOTHING’S REAL: Don’t take everything so seriously. At the end of the day we’re all just humans on this earth that are gonna die eventually so in the grand scheme of things, the location of the globe that you sit on doesn’t matter too much.

#6 MAKE GOALS FOR YOURSELF: One thing that was hard was the fact that I was kinda just here without a job or structure or plan. I’m on my gap year so I have finished high school and I'm kinda just having a free year for myself. But one thing that I've learned from having no structure is that I need a little structure. So if you make goals for yourself, it will give your life a little purpose and give you something to work towards. One kind of obvious idea is learning your language. Put all of your time and effort into studying and trying to learn your language and not only will this keep you busy, it will also help you with communicating with people and making friends. But if you aren't as focused on the language part, learn a new skill or try to be a new person. Make use of your time here so that when you go back home you don’t see it as a wasted year. In the very least you did something and were able to bring that back with you.

#7 FRIENDS: Now this one completely depends on your situation. Making friends with people that you actually have a genuine connection with and who make you feel content is hard. You can easily get unlucky and not have this luxury. Thankfully for me I was able to make really great friends. One of the few good things about my district is the fact that I have Italian language classes twice a week with the other exchange students here. As well as this, we all live relatively close to one another so meeting up outside of those classes was not an issue. I will say most other districts are not like this and it’s pretty unique but it completely changed everything for me. I remember we didn't meet until about a month in and I was struggling. I told myself that I wasn't going to think about going home and ending my exchange, or at least not until it had been one month. But even though I told myself that, I felt pretty strongly deep down that I wanted to stop. It wasn’t until I met the others that I started getting my happiness back and feeling hopeful about my exchange year. We immediately clicked and grew to be best friends in as little as three weeks. They're my support system and my family here. So if you have the opportunity, try to find people like that. Go out of your way to be social and nice and inclusive and give everybody a chance. You never know the kind of relationships you could form.

#8 EXPLORE: One of my personal goals for myself was becoming an expert at all things Milan. I want to end this year knowing every corner of the city and have a master list of the best restaurants, museums, attractions, parks, etc. Not only does it give me something to do, it’s really fun. And even if you don’t live in a super big city, you can also go in surrounding areas or travel to a near city if you're able to.

#9 MUSIC: This one’s a bit more specific to myself, but for me music is very important and can completely change my mood and how I’m feeling. Sometimes all you need is a good song to turn from sad to happy. Music connects with memories and you can either use that to your advantage or disadvantage. There were a few times that I was walking to or from school and I had my headphones in and played sad music. Then I would start thinking about things or people that I missed and I'd start crying. But I realized that I wasn't actually sad, it was the music that was making everything more dramatic. So if you flip that and play happy music, you can get the same effect. I don't know if it works for everyone but it’s a big one for me so try it out.

#10 LET YOURSELF FEEL SAD: Obviously not permanently and you don’t want to get stuck in a sad state, but every once and a while it’s actually healthy to feel sad. I do this a lot because I hate being sad but when you deny yourself those feelings and hold it all back, sometimes you can end up feeling even worse. If you let yourself feel the emotion it can be a huge release to get it out of your system. As a result you feel refreshed and have a clean slate. After I have a good cry, I feel like I can think more clearly and am ultimately happier.

For me it wasn't any of these things individually, but all of them together as a whole that helped me get through tough times. They’re connected and interwork with one another. I love it here and I'll never have another year just like this ever again so I take every second and make the most of it. If you’re struggling I know that it’s hard, maybe the hardest thing you’ve ever had to do, but you’re so much stronger than you know. I know that it’s a cliche but the power of positive thinking really makes all the difference in the world. I was able to turn my exchange year into something completely new and I honestly think it’s because I went with the flow and didn’t stress about things I couldn't control. Even when things would get rocky I didn't give up and maintained a positive outlook. I hope that someone out there on exchange, about to do exchange, or even just thinking about exchange can take something from this. Good luck to y’all!

Alex Torgerson (District 2041: Milan, Italy)

January 18, 2023