My first and hopefully not final post

Hello Readers!

So I’ve tried this blogging business before and successfully published one post before completely abandoning the idea. In light of my future adventures, I do think it’s time to give it another try and stick with it! In 3 days, I will begin the most exciting experience of my life… backpacking through Europe!!!! Background information about me before I rocket into my first official blog post blabber (we just won’t count the first one)

1. I’m a student at Ohio State, studying Chemical Engineering. I just finished my fourth year, but due to my co-op, still have a couple of semesters left until I can graduate.

2. I’m from Northern Virginia (NoVA), but have not spent a ton of time at home since leaving for school. I’m home now, which is awesome. It’s like living in paradise compared to the cheap-rent apartments I’ve been living in for the past couple of years.

3. I have a twin sister who is currently sitting on the couch and distracting me by putting on Parks and Recreation. I’m a terrible multi-tasker so this will probably not end well.

Anyway, with Parks and Rec on, I feel like everything I’ve just typed pretty much sums up my entire life story. Oh, good the show’s over! Moving on.. So for as long as I can remember, I’ve always dreamed of traveling and seeing the world. I get very bored if I stay in one place for too long and love switching things up. That being the case, I’ve always wanted to study abroad as a means to continue working towards my degree while getting away from routine life for a while.

I was really disappointed my freshman year when I expressed this to my advisor and she told me that Chemical Engineers don’t have any options to study abroad at OSU. My sophomore year in college, I was lucky enough to earn a spot in Dow Chemical’s Alternating Term Co-op program where I would be able to work several different terms at different locations for Dow Chemical (This was largely due to networking help from my friend Anthony, to whom I am eternally grateful). This gave me the opportunity to travel and see different places while also getting the best possible look at career options in Chemical Engineering with my top choice company! I promise this story leads to something having to do with Europe, just keep reading…

So I got the co-op, and my first work term was in Bristol, PA, a tiny town outside of Philadelphia. I made awesome friends there and really felt like a part of the Dow community by the end if my term. But most importantly for the purposes of this story, I became friends with another co-op student named McKinley who attended Georgia Tech. Me and McKinley got to talking about our interests, and obviously travel came up. He told me that he had just completed a study abroad program in London that was offered through his school for a summer class that all chemical engineers have to take called unit operations, unit ‘ops’ for short, He told me how much fun it was and how amazing the experience was for him. I don’t have a very good memory, but I can remember exactly where we were when we were having this conversation, which in my mind, means that it must have been a conversation worth remembering.

Long story short, I got the contact information of the professor in charge of the study abroad program and was later accepted to go for this summer 2013 term! The program itself doesn’t start until late June, but for the 3 weeks leading up to the program, I will be travelling around Europe with a couple of students from Georgia Tech.

Preparing for the trip has been easy up until recently. For about the past week, I’ve started to feel stressed out about how expensive preparation is. Also, last week I drove down to South Carolina where my boyfriend, Tyler, is on an internship assignment with Amazon which was another expense for me. I have no regrets having visited him though because we had a great time and we’ll already be separated for a while which is bad enough without a little visit.

Yesterday I got my hair put into a protective style called senegalese twists, so that my hair would not get damaged from the lack of time and products I’ll have to care for it. My hair is natural, which I’ve learned in the past couple of years is seriously a part time job and a pretty huge commitment. Those two things plus a sort of last-second decision to buy a Eurail pass have set me back quite a bit in terms of finances, but I truly believe it’ll all be well worth the cost.

So right now, all I really have to do is scan a few copies of important documents, remember to check in for my flight, and pack. I’m extremely excited and honestly starting to get a little nervous. As many things as there are that can go wrong, it’s all part of the experience for me. And this is an experience that I want to be whole, inconveniences and all. This makes me feel better when I start to get nervous and then I end up left with raw excitement that may have led me to impulsively start another blog that will end and begin with the same post lol. Welp, off to do more research!