Blog #7
Remembering and trying to work towards my goals everyday has been challenging. When life was so busy during my gap year, I found it difficult to think about my goals in my everyday life and progressively work towards them. It was even hard to remember what my main goals were before entering my gap year because throughout my year abroad, I would set mini goals for myself as I was put into new situations with new challenges. It is hard to set an expectation for yourself before you know what you are getting into.
One goal that I know I did stick to was my language goal. I wanted to achieve a good level of understanding and ability to use French. This goal I worked towards every day as everyday there was at least one situation where I had to speak French. I would be forced to practice whenever I wanted to speak to my host family or school friends. Even on the days where I would be mainly around other international students and we would speak english together, I would have to speak french at one point when talking to people in stores, restaurants, or trains. And even though I know that I am not fluent in French, I have definitely made huge progress in what I understand and what I can say in French if you compare me to the start of my gap year. Being totally immersed into a language has taught me more of a language in a shorter amount of time as compared to any foreign language that I had to study before in a class.
Another goal that I set for myself was that I wanted to figure out what I wanted to study the following year at FSU. Before, I was set to study computer science. Being around so many other international students and getting to live in another country really enforced my love for traveling and made me want to have a job that either took me abroad, or earned me enough money to where I could travel. But still, I had not experienced any life changing event that helped me see exactly what I wanted to do. Gaining new knowledge in French allowed me to see that I do want to continue to study French at FSU, but only alongside another major. As of now, I have switched my major to International Affairs but I am still not confident in that decision so hopefully my time at FSU will actually give me more guidance in this area.
My third goal was to make long lasting connections with the people that I met while on my gap year. I can say with a full heart that I had accomplished this early on in my gap year. Being with either my school friends or exchange student friends was when I made some of my happiest moments. I still talk to a lot of my friends that I made abroad daily and have high hopes of seeing some of them again soon.
