I Didn’t Do A Semester Abroad

Buzzy Robinson7 years ago

Why didn’t I choose to ex-pat myself on the back for entire semester of American college? First of all, you can’t make me. My people didn’t sail here on rickety wooden boats, packed nuts to butts like red-headed freckled sardines eating disease ridden potatoes, just so 170 years later I could go BACK to Europe. Fuck that.

Immigrants come to this country for a reason. And that reason is to drink what you want, fuck who you like, and worship whatever spaceship-flying alien-lizard god you choose.

America is the champagne of countries. You might be thinking, “Hey, isn’t champagne French?” Yes, it is, and you’re a nerd for knowing that. America is also a cultural melting pot, you ignorant sack of ignorance.

“Melting pot” means we get to steal whatever we want from other cultures, no questions asked. Checkmate and or suck it, international community.

I truly have no interest in wasting an entire semester studying abroad. There are plenty of perfectly toothsome broads to study here in the U.S. of A.

Well over half of my pledge class studied abroad, leaving me to defend the fort like the Last of the Mohicans while they ate crumpits and wienerschnitzels in Europe for fourteen weeks. The vast majority of them had nothing but glowing things to say about the “experience” and the, well, the “experience.”

People coming back from a semester abroad are nauseatingly insufferable. Every time they tell me about the time they visited the Tower of London, I picture Parks and Recreation character, and first team All-American badass, Ron Swanson saying, “Try the Sears Tower, friend.”

I get it, going to visit another part of the world can be an eye-opening and mind-expanding opportunity. I just don’t understand why anybody would capitalize on this particular opportunity in the middle of their time as an American college student. That’s all.

Unless you hate college for some reason, why wouldn’t you just wait until you have a job? When you’re done with school, you can visit another country without having to go to class and do homework while you’re there.

It’s as if you’re consciously choosing to remove a sizable chunk from what is arguably the most enjoyable four years of your life as an American citizen. To me, this seems foolhardy and ill-advised.

I’m all for going out into world and testing your survival skills as a young, independent adult. That’s some straight up Spartan shit. But, that’s not what studying abroad is. A semester abroad is just a very expensive vacation that you take with a bunch of random classmates. A vacation that includes doing homework on another continent.

It’s not like you’re a young Eskimo, leaving the village to kill his first penguin. You’re just a massive insurance liability that your college is strategically outsourcing to another institution across the Atlantic Ocean.

I’m sure that at some point in my life I’ll go “across the pond” and eat some “bangers and mash” and see if some “fit birds” would like to “shag me” in my “flat.” It’s just not something that I’m willing to take time away from the four year, all-inclusive resort that my parents call a university to do.

Life really isn’t that short. It’s long and wide (phrasing). You got time. Take it easy. You can always go to South America when you’re wanted for tax evasion. The vast majority of your twenties is still ahead of you, so enjoy that shit. College is fun. Don’t purposefully skip out on it..