leaving

Saying Goodbye

2/10/2019

Hello! Yes, um, I am skressed. Skressed the heck out. It has really started to hit me that I am moving to an entirely different country, 7840 miles away from home and my mother for 19 weeks. I’ve never gone without seeing my mother for longer than 2 months. If you’re a momma’s girl too, you probably know about the pit that has slowly been forming in my stomach.

It’s not really just leaving my mom that has me nervous. It’s leaving all the positive relationships that I have made over the last 2.5 years. After trying for so long, I finally found a good place for myself, so at times it feels like I’m throwing something good away and just leaving. Yet, I know that this is not the case. I am going on the trip of a lifetime that everyone in my life (including strangers) supports and praises me for doing. Yes, it will be hard to miss getting to know my g-little! It’s going to devastating to miss 3 of my best friends’ graduations from college, but also my little sister’s graduation from high school. (She missed mine for gymnastics though, so I’m not as upset about that one.) It’s going to be hard to leave the country knowing I haven’t seen my friend in the hospital one time since she’s been there, and I won’t be able to see her until I get back. These things and so many others are so difficult, but change is good, and all of these things will be waiting for me when I get back. Especially you Alex Warner! (Go Donate to her gofundme please and sign up to be a living donor! We gotta get this girl a kidney.)

2/16/2019

It’s the big day!!! I am currently writing this in the San Francisco airport as I await to board my delayed flight. I can write a different post to tell you all about this crazy day I’ve had. HOWEVER, this one is about putting pause on one chapter of my life while I start a new one. Let’s just say I got writer’s block. (I think that was witty, but I also think I am the funniest person ever so interpret it how you will)

As anyone can imagine, saying goodbye is hard. Everything I wrote above (in blue) was written right as I was leaving Pittsburgh. I have great friends. They encourage me to want to do better things with myself whether it be striving for that 4.0 and medical school or getting over my anxiety and fear of talking to people and actually communicate my feelings. They make me want to do it. I think that’s one of the reasons saying goodbye was hard. Of course, I thought about not getting in that car to leave Pittsburgh and not getting on the flight to leave home, but I did it. I did it because these people help make me strong, and they encourage me in everything I do. They’d be disappointed if I didn’t get on the plane, and everyone knows that disappointed is worse than mad. Wow, I’m getting sappy. If you’re thinking about studying abroad, I think it’s really important to have a strong support system, especially if you’re doing a program like me, where I know absolutely no one and am in a country where almost everything is different.

Before I left Pittsburgh, I wanted to see and spend time with as many of the people that I’m close to as possible. Unfortunately, there wasn’t enough time to see everyone and do everything. That doesn’t mean that they don’t still love me and won’t miss me when I’m gone or vice versa. To everyone who went out of their way at some point in the last few weeks to do something with me, thank you so much. It means the world. To everyone who I didn’t get a chance to say goodbye to, I love you too and I’ll see you when I get back. Now that really sounded like I was dying, or I was going to end the post, but I have more!

P.S. Shout out to my beautiful sissies for my going away gift! They painted a box for me and each of them wrote at least one letter with words of encouragement for whenever I need them throughout my trip. I’m sure I’ll use it at least 3 times a day just so I can read the letters in their voices.

When I got back home to MD I didn’t do much. I don’t really hang out or talk to anyone from high school other than Shleigh. I wanted to see some of my old coworkers, but our plans fell through because “someone” (me) didn’t get her hair finished in time. Anyways, the at home goodbyes were a little easier because there weren’t as many. I spent the week mostly with my boyfriend (Kyle) taking some time off to spend time with my parents and celebrate Shleigh’s 21st birthday. All in all, the week was pretty chill, and even though I know each day meant I was closer to leaving, I didn’t really have any feelings. Rather, I think the excitedness about this new experience but the sadness in leaving my loved ones and comfort zone neutralized each other. I got to say goodbye to Zeus and Thurgood, (idk how I am going to live without a pet for 19 weeks, but I guess we will see) Kyle’s family, Shleigh and her family, and even got to talk on the phone with Alex for the first time since her accident a few days ago. My two mommas and Kyle drove me to Dulles and helped me check my bags and walked me over to the security check. Of course, I cried, because my mother has that effect and I am going from long distance relationship to Xtreme long distance relationship, but I decided to do this and I know it’s all going to be worth it.

“With every goodbye, comes a new hello.”

How Did I Get Here?

Why in the world is this little black girl, that’s majoring in sociology, wants to be a doctor, and is learning chinese- going to this little island that is 7,840 miles away from her mother?! Well fam, I’ll tell ya. It all started out on December 4th, 1997 at 5:52 am. A young queen was born. jkjk- But in all actuality, I am a sagittarius and I love to travel. I have been fortunate to do so throughout my life so it’s a regular thing that I do. Since I love to travel, I’d always known that I’d wanted to study abroad somewhere. I wasn’t quite sure where, with who, or for what, but I knew that I wanted to be somewhere that wasn’t America for a period of time in which I’d be able to grow and experience new things. When I was a first-year at Pitt and had fully commited to Chinese I had set my sights on the Pitt in Shanghai program. I had already been to both Changchun in Mainland China’s Jilin province as well as Beijing during my 2 week visit in 2012. I’d also heard great things about Shanghai so that’s where I decided I wanted to go. In Pitt’s study abroad office, they have a wall of postcards for several of the study abroad programs that they offer. So when I happened to be in the office, as a lesson through my freshman programs class, I grabbed the Shanghai postcard, and taped to my desk as a constant reminder and goal.

Fast forward to the second semester of my second year, I began to seriously plan my study abroad trip. I had applied for the Healthcare Delivery in Beijing Program as well as the Pitt in Shanghai Program. I’d also dug a little deeper into PittMAP (more on that in a minute). I decided to withdraw my applications for both of these programs because a 4/6 week program over the summer wasn’t going to be enough for me. I needed to be away for a whole semester. 5 straight semsters* of full time school and part-time work as well as plenty of life events in-between had worn me out. During my research for which summer study abroad programs I was interested in, I’d also conducted research for semester study abroad programs. I came across PittMAP. PittMAP can be primarily described as a public health program that visits 3 countries relating to the areas of study. When I was looking into it, the program was visiting Shanghai, Sydney, and Buenos Aires. It was perfect- especially for my strange combination of study. The public health part would teach me about health in different parts of the world, boom, pre-med hit. Since sociology is a huge part of public health, two SOC classes were included in the program’s course load. Boom, major requirements hit. Since I would be in Shanghai for a month, I would’ve been able to practice my Chinese, boom, Chinese hit. Unfortuantely bad things love to happen to me. I found out mid-summer that PittMAP was actually cycling through locations and were going to different cities in 2019. Even worse was that the planning for the new cities was a disaster, so even though they were changing it, nothing for 2019 was finalized for a reasonable price and the program wouldn’t even be offered in 2019. Time to find a new program.

“Why me?”

-Mid-summer stressed out Brittany

HOW IN THE WORLD WAS I GOING TO FIND A NEW PROGRAM? I had to fufill sociology major requirements as well as asian studies certificate requirements at the very least. I knew this would prove to be a difficult task so my adrenaline took over my social anxiety and pushed me to call the study abroad office so that I could talk to a real person about my current problem (a historically difficult task.) I did this and talked to Brice (assistant director) who suggested some programs for me to look into and connected me with Leslie (pitt recognized program adviser) so that she could help me out more. When I got to school I actually met up with Leslie and told her what I needed. She too gave me some programs to look into and connected me with people from different study abroad organizations that could possibly help me out. A few days after meeting with Leslie, I recieved an email from a representative for CIEE. He told me that Leslie had reached out and included a link of a program that he thought would satisfy everything that I needed. At first I was a little skeptical because the name was COMMUNICATIONS, BUSINESS + POLITICAL ECONOMY. First of all, the all caps is already alarming, and second of all, nothing in the title has anything to do with my course of study. However, upon further inspection, I learned that I had finally found my program.

*I did 5 semesters of straight school because I took 11 credits the summer after my freshman year even though I worked 25+ hours a week