Ah, heart pangs. Wanderlust. Debilitating moments where instead of being productive, I skim through the thousands and thousands of pictures I have of my two years studying and being a part of Switzerland.

A lot of people treat my two years abroad as a sort of vacation. In that I first went to travel and have fun and second study. That is very very false. Being at a small school you learn how it works, and you want to learn how to get involved. Even though my photographs rarely show the blandness of the cafeterias or the classrooms, that’s because I take them for granted and appreciate my time spent in il centro and fuori scuola (downtown and outside school).

My school had a rigorous course schedule and unrelenting amounts of papers and homework. German, British, and Italian professors  with heavy accents teach you about gender roles, the history of Italy, and how to do algebraic equations. If I earned an A, it was something I had worked my ass of for. My B’s were also hard won…a particularly brilliant and quick witted professor named Professor Pyka would give us obscure readings and ask us to make connections. His insatiable appetite for academic progress made us all cower in fear, awe, and mostly confusion.

It’s strange, because now that I’ve transferred elsewhere, I still wake up and consciously have to adjust myself to what is to being a new world. I’ve been here for seven weeks and I still think I’ll see my professors in the local bar. I see students here who look like friends back in Switzerland. I hear people speak German and I smell cigarette smoke and I am brought back to nights huddling at the tables outside the Irish pub or making my way to Club 1 in the dark alleys of Lugano. I think my professors are accessible by email at 3 am.

Honestly, Franklin is not an Ivy League institution, but I’ve been here for seven weeks and have seamlessly gotten into the level of academic rigor as befits a junior in college. My money that I have paid for an international education has paid off; in fact, I’ve been acing all my exams, and feel totally competant to face any challenges the world  holds for me. Maybe it’s because I’ve slept in train stations, been lost in foreign countries, have made friends who don’t speak English on train rides, and have ordered food in multiple languages, but something about living in Switzerland for two years has bolstered my confidence in myself and my ability to do whatever I want to.

Franklin, do not forget me. I shall never forget you!