Before my program started, before I arrived in the UK, and in fact throughout the summer and the latter half of the spring semester, my major concern was most definitely making new friends. Looking back on it, since Kindergarten and up through the end of 12th grade, it wasn't that difficult as I went to public school. Part of a giant school system, I went to one of eight elementary schools, one of three middle schools, and everyone ended up at the same high school, so most people were not completely new. While friend groups shrunk, grew, evolved and changed over time, our friends were relatively built in for us already as we had a limited pool to choose from.
Come freshman year, making friends was a slightly more daunting task. The walls fell down and suddenly my student body was four times as large. I spent much of freshman year spending time with my roommates and neighbors. The group of lovely people who would eventually become my core friend group at GWU would not have been easy to find had I not shared a long-time mutual friend with one of them, but that's a story for another day. In short, in my life, I have never had to make a huge effort to make friends. I have never started off completely on my own, traveling to a new place, where I would be living for a full academic year, knowing that every friend I make this year is someone I did not know before.
I mentioned in an earlier post that I had joined the LSE Women's Rugby Club. This was completely new and strange territory to me. My parents thought I was joking when I told them at first. This is because I have never legitimately played any team sports, contact sports, or just...sports in general. I played soccer at the YMCA when i was four and I did gymnastics for about four years, but since the sixth grade, I was a theatre kid. After graduation, I let that go too, and my last two years at GWU have been characterised by floating from student org to student org; I hadn't yet found anything I really, truly liked doing, aside from French Club and Alternative Breaks, neither of which I can do abroad.
If you're studying abroad for a whole year, it may not seem like that much at first, but it's a lot. It's a whole 25% of your college career, assuming you follow the traditional 4-year path as I intend to do, and when you get back, you're in your last year and real life is staring you right in the face. You've just established a presence on campus, solidified your friend group, gotten deeply involved in whatever you do, fallen in and out of love 20 times, and then you leave it all back in the USA for a whole year. When you arrive, it feels like freshman year all over again. I had orientation week, complete with presentations, outings, events, and the freshers' fair, which is their student orgs fair.
I'm not quite sure when I made the decision to join rugby, but it happened at some point during the freshers' fair when they handed out cookies as bribes. But in all seriousness, they emphasized that no experience was needed (great, I have none!), it's so much fun (I like fun!), and I'll fall in love with the sport and the girls (something new and exciting!).
Study Abroad a time for self-exploration as well as self-establishment and personal growth. That is why it exists; not simply for growth in the classroom but outside. LSE has a myriad of fun societies to join, many of which do not exist at GWU, and I was originally hoping to join one of those, just to make the experience even more 'out there.' I certainly was not expecting to join a sports team. However, as I felt I was welcomed with open arms into the women's rugby club before I even joined, how could I possibly say no?
The WRFC has provided me with several important things, the first being a somewhat regular exercise regimen. The second is a regular social fixture; every Wednesday, all the sports teams have some sort of event at the student center, followed by a mass exodus to a club in Leicester Square. The third is my new ambition to push myself physically, which comes hand-in-hand with the team mentality that a team is only as strong as its weakest member; experience or not, I don't want to be that weakest member. Perhaps the most important thing rugby has given me, and will continue to give me throughout my time here, is the sense that I am firmly a part of something. During freshman and sophomore years, as I explored my interests but didn't dive wholeheartedly into much of anything, whenever people asked what I did outside class or what organisations I was a part of, I hemmed and hawed until my answer was sort of "oh, you know, a little bit of this, a little bit of that." Now, when someone asks me what I do outside class, I can confidently say I play rugby, whether or not I play well. An even better part of this is that rugby is something I can potentially bring back with me. Attention, GW Women's Rugby, if you want a new player next year: I'm in.