Complete and Creative

How Studying Abroad is Like a Reality TV Show (2/2)

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Does anyone have any idea where I’m getting at yet? Do you watch The Bachelor or any of those other shows that are meant to show the ugliest and, theoretically, most beautiful sides of the love between a man and a woman (I’m not sure American TV would ever see a reality TV show about homosexual couples)?

You grow to like each other. Very fast. Sometimes, you grow to like the same people. That could be very good, and it could be very bad.

One of the parks in Malmo, ‘The City of Parks,’ the southernmost city in Sweden. In honor of a country where some now friends and I definitely had a reality TV show experience.

News spreads. News turns into gossip. Then it spreads faster. Alliances form. Information gets transferred only through certain channels, some slower than others, some so slow that it no longer matters when the information is heard.

Some international students simply don’t care about any of this, but it’s hard not to be pulled into the whirlpool of emotional activity going on. Plus, those who don’t care don’t have as much fun. They don’t go through as much unnecessary drama either, but there’s usually something to be learned in unnecessary drama. I personally found my experience abroad in Japan to be more complete because of it. There were quite a few nights when guys and girls were on opposite sides of the negotiation, trying to get information out of each other.

It all sounds very silly, and it was (come on, are reality TV shows anything but silly?), but you just don’t realize it when you’re doing it. It all felt very real, and it was. Once again, it was because everyone knew everyone.

All this is encompassed by the pervading knowledge that this will all end. Whether you’re there for just a summer, a semester, or a full year, it will end. You might bring friendships (and maybe more) back with you across the ocean or across the border, but it is all too fleeting (I shall refrain from indulging in a philosophical sidenote about how all life is beautiful because all is fleeting). If you’re studying abroad for your entire college education, then your experience is outside of the scope of this article written by someone who has, for better or worse, never studied that long in any one country.

Because you know it will end soon, you try to live everyday to the fullest, which is what everyone should do everyday, but you have to keep perspective in mind. Most young humans aren’t capable of imagining their lives ending, but they can imagine half a year from now. Because you try to live everyday to the fullest, you make decisions you might be too timid to make otherwise. Sometimes, they’re rash decisions, but they’re your own nonetheless.

We all know reality TV shows are anything but reality, but we believe in the reality TV whips up for us because it’s great entertainment. That’s at least one difference between studying abroad and reality TV shows. Despite all the similarities, studying abroad is irrefutably real.