A Second Chance

The past few days have been a total hurricane in my life, but in a good way.  As I mentioned in my last post, I originally applied for a full year at Heidelberg, but was denied to the limited spaces DU had available for full year placements.  Imagine my surprise when I opened my email yesterday morning to find an email from DU’s study abroad office telling me that someone had withdrawn, and I was being offered a full year placement.  To say that I felt a whirlwind of emotions would be an understatement.  I definitely started crying simply because I could not process every thought and emotion that went into my head.  And I texted all of my best friends and cried some more while discussing thoughts with them.  Da Laina and Meg, you guys are my lifelines.  And then my mom finally woke up (she had worked the night before) and I cried more with her.  I really did not know what to do.  I had essentially given up hope of being offered the full year and I had not planned for it, and when I read that email I just did not know what to do.  After emailing just about every advisor I have at both DU and Heidelberg (which is seriously around 7 or 8 different people), I found out that this was something I could realistically do.  My program advisor at Heidelberg said it was a simple switch and they would love to have me the whole year and my parents encouraged me, knowing this was my dream for a long time. So, I decided to accept the offer.  I am proud and ecstatic to announce that I will be studying at the Universität Heidelberg for the entirety of my Junior year.  I still leave August 5th and my program goes until August 1st of 2019.  I might come home during the term break or at some other point, but all of that has yet to be decided so keep checking back for updates!

All of that being said, this was still an incredibly difficult decision for me.  I had to give up some amazing things to make this work and my heart is will be sad about some of those for a long time to come.  I will miss my friends and my family immensely.  I will be missing out on a year of joy with my beloved sorority.  I will miss my younger brother’s high school graduation.  But knowing all of that–and after getting encouragement from everyone involved that I care about–I still decided to accept.  I honestly cannot express in words how much this opportunity means to me.  I have always wanted to be fluent in German and this will allow that.  Additionally, I have felt for a while that study abroad will be an amazing growing opportunity for me, and I want to take this time to really figure out who I am and who I want to be, as cliché as that sounds.  I feel very called to this and I know that I will learn so much.

I am still terrified, if I am being completely honest.  But I am so incredibly grateful to God and to my parents for making this happen for me.  I hope you keep coming back to hear about my adventures, because this is going to be one of the most exciting years of my life and the best experience I will have had thus far.  This is just the start! I cannot wait to share it all with you.

Lots of love,

Meghan