Final Blog: Self-Reflection

What stands out to me the most about my study abroad experience is how to collaborate with many different personalities and how to harmonize myself with our class, as well as with different cultures. I mentioned in Assignment 1 that I had limited travel experience and that I was very happy to go to several countries that challenged my self-confidence, while still having a collaborative team that could work off of each other to get the most out of each other’s education. Group dynamics gave me the opportunity to “go with the flow” while still actively aligning myself with whichever country’s culture I was living in.

I learned that I personally don’t always have the same energy level as many other people, but that there are ways to still keep involved with the group, without necessarily doing everything that the group does. For example, I got sick during the tour, which never completely went away and lowered my energy level; however, it was my opinion that despite this weakness in energy, that persistence would be needed to keep attending outings as I did not want an excuse for not going outside of my comfort zone through attending all the activities in our itinerary and improving myself as an individual. Many people on this study tour would go out in their free time, and despite my wanting to rest, I would only take this option if I felt I genuinely couldn’t do an activity in any reasonable capacity (Ex: skipping the Vienna pools). I would make an effort to actively listen more to others rather than trying to talk a lot and I focused on being involved even minimally in activities if I couldn’t involve myself fully.

Overall, I felt that I improved as a person and was able to overcome my concern for travelling internationally on my own. I look forward to travelling to many other destinations and I feel that I have MacEwan’s Study Tour opportunity to thank for that. Did anyone else grow or learn something about themselves that they otherwise wouldn’t have found if they’d stayed in Canada?

Hope to hear from you,

David Bell