Arborescent Study Abroad

The study abroad experience is like being a tree. You arrive to the country as a small sapling, planted in a foreign environment. You began to grow roots and become acclimated to your surroundings. Your branches grow and extend as you reach out to the world around you. You begin to sprout leaves in order to photosynthesize as much nourishing knowledge as possible as you can. You hope your broadening trunk will give you a firm grounding to weather the storms that may come to impede your development. With time, your core also grows and distance between the rings indicates the growth you have made. Once you have become established in your environment, you find it difficult to consider existence somewhere else. You don't want to be uprooted and forced to acclimate once again. No matter where you are, you can always look back at the your rings and remember the growth you made during that time.