When I signed up to join the English Language Institute (ELI), I was paired with a Colombian PhD student, Carolina, who had come to conduct research. During our first meeting, she told me that I was talking too fast and needed to slow down. I think my enthusiasm for meeting someone new and my desperate need to make a good first impression meant that I was actively making it hard for her to understand me. 

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As we met more throughout the semester, I made an effort to speak more slowly, take breaks in between sentences and let her guide the conversation. There was a lot of awkward silence, but I think we liked being in each other's company. After we got to know each other, I made a deliberate effort to plan and suggest activities so we could both get to know Gainesville. We went to Paynes Prairie, and she shared all this knowledge about birds that I wouldn’t have otherwise known. We also went to Ginnie Springs, and after swimming and tubing, we talked about the water and what we saw. 

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Our conversations improved, and we were able to talk more about our families and our experiences in Florida. I appreciate the friendship that came out of that experience because talking to her helped me understand how much I assumed people knew what I meant without explicitly saying it. I learned how to be an intentional and active listener. 

After my semester with Carolina and my other activities at ELI, I was able to work on my public speaking skills. I learned to calm my nerves before speaking in front of a class or a boss. I don’t let my enthusiasm or anxiety hinder my ability to speak clearly and stay on topic. These lessons now guide how I approach interviews and conversations, helping me speak more clearly and stay focused.

One of my resolutions last year was to read 10 books. I was an avid reader throughout my childhood and early teens, but sometime during the pandemic, I stopped reading for fun. I associated reading with homework. So, ten books were a big deal for me. I saw reading as a task, and felt very overwhelmed academically. 

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But over the past few years, having healed that relationship (somewhat), I wanted to get back into reading and had made a little progress over the summer. During my semester abroad, I took a class called Literature in the Modern World, taught by an American lecturer, Kelly Hunnings. We read texts like “Small Things Like These” by Claire Keegan and “Carmilla” by Sheridan Le Fanu. She told us how she woke up early each morning to read before doing anything else. Inspired by her and her love for literature, I started reading for 15–20 minutes every morning before school.

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At first, it was hard to pay attention for even a few minutes. I was fidgety and restless. I would give up in the first few pages if I didn't like the way the author wrote. With a little perseverance and intention, I went through more books in three months than I had in over three years. I read one of the biggest books I’d ever read: ”The Secret History* by Donna Tartt. It was a mountain I thought I’d never overcome. I built a practice that became a habit and a ritual that helped me fall in love with reading again and changed my relationship not just with reading but with technology. Not looking at my phone each morning helped me relax and detach from social media. Since reading the texts from Hunnings’ class and some of my own picks, I have an ambitious reading goal for 2026, and I’m making good progress so far. As of February, I’m on book 4/26.​​

During my time at Dublin Business School, I enrolled in a master’s level digital marketing class. One of the main assignments involved developing a social media strategy for a local business. My team was struggling to decide on a company because we needed to secure relevant industry data. I suggested we partner with the company where I was interning, Stillgarden Distillery. I knew I could access the social media data we needed to study, and my boss, who was the co-founder, would give us some guidance for the industry and company analysis elements we needed to address. 

 

I pitched the idea to my team and to my boss, Viki, and she agreed to help us. As the liaison, I coordinated meeting times for the business and the group, arranged interviews and ensured that the group’s research and direction aligned with the company’s goals. I was worried that being an undergraduate would be a challenge, given that they all had the same schedule and were already friends. However, I developed a good relationship with my team members, who were all also international students. Our differences in education and experiences meant we relied on each other's personal strengths and talents. 

 

We delivered a polished presentation that drew on insider data and expert insights that we might not have had otherwise. We received positive feedback from our lecturer and earned a top grade. 

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Trying to study abroad as an international student who is already, by all means, "studying abroad" has a unique set of challenges. When I first decided to go to Dublin in the fall, I hadn't realized all the logistics involved in getting there. The spring prior, I was in Gainesville, but I knew I had to go home (to Copenhagen) to renew my U.S. visa, and I had to come back to the U.S. to complete my summer internship. What I didn't immediately consider was that, on top of applying for my U.S. visa renewal, I was also applying for an extension of my Danish residence permit, my Irish visa, and a visitor's visa to the UK (for a study tour in Northern Ireland). So, after briefly panicking and crying about my weak passport, I gathered as much information as I could on what documents I’d need and how long each step would take.

 

Over the course of three months, I prioritized what I could do remotely and in advance while anticipating the arrangements I'd need to make when I got to each destination. I gathered all my application documents, one of which was a scanned copy of every single page in my passport. I coordinated all my travel arrangements with my study abroad advisors in Gainesville and Dublin. Though things quickly fell apart when U.S. visa requirements changed in June, I somehow managed to come back to Gainesville to complete my internship and get to Dublin with no issues. In the first month in Dublin, while juggling moving in and being alone in a foreign country, I made the one-hour journey to the UK visa office to submit my biometrics. I went to Belfast with my class and spent reading week in London and Oxford with my family.