Goals, Thoughts, and Maximizing the Experience
This summer, I will be spending 2 months in New Zealand for an Outdoor Education internship. While I have yet to be placed at a specific site, I do have some goals I would like to achieve through my summer abroad as well as some other thoughts and ideas about the trip.
I currently work in the Outdoor Education field and am majoring in Outdoor Studies and Tourism. I have spent the past 3 summers working at various camps, and I hope to spend the rest of my life taking groups outside to help them learn more about themselves and each other. I want to enhance the skills I have already begun to form in my field. Going abroad will hopefully help me hone my people skills as I work with an entirely new population of people than I typically interact with. I also have high hopes that traveling abroad will help me learn to be an even more flexible person. My final goal for this coming summer is to learn to surf.
As my departure date gets closer, I am steadily getting more nervous. Most of my nerves have to do with the expensive price tag on this trip. While I am putting every penny I make into my New Zealand fund as well as selling embroideries and other items and applying for scholarships, it is a nerve-wracking experience to look at a price that is at least 5 times what I have in my bank account. I do, however, believe that I will be able to make it with donations, grants and scholarships, and my continual efforts to work as much as I can. In addition to worries, I am very excited. I have wanted to go to New Zealand ever since I learned as a child that the Lord of the Rings movies were filmed there. I have wanted to go there even more when I realized how great the Outdoor Ed. and Recreation fields are in the country and how many opportunities there are.
Many people talk about "maximizing your experience" when they talk about studying abroad. I think this is a valuable point to bring up. I can see how it would be easy to get caught up in the details before my trip and then focus solely on the full time job I will have when I am abroad. I want to avoid doing those things. I hope that by blogging about my experience along the way, I can help myself to stop and think about everything as I get closer and closer to my departure. Once I am in New Zealand, I plan on spending as much free time as possible exploring the country and spending time with locals. I hope to build strong relationships with my co-workers and whoever I will be living with and around. I want to get the experience of living in New Zealand rather than visiting New Zealand.
I hope that you will continue to follow along as I blog about my process of preparing for New Zealand. If you feel so inclined as to help me worry less about the financial side of study abroad, feel free to donate to my GoFundMe!
https://www.gofundme.com/kates-new-zealand-internship
-Kate
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