Enjoy Penn, Europe will be waiting

In a few weeks I am going to begin my junior year of college. But I am not going abroad first semester, and have no intentions or plans of going abroad second semester. Before you begin to feel sorry for me, or offer words of sympathy, know that I have decided not to study abroad by choice -- a phenomenon these days uncommon at Penn.

With something like 30 percent of the student body choosing to head to a foreign land for a semester, or even a whole year, my decision to spend another year strolling down Locust Walk instead of the Left Bank or the canals of Venice has been met with disbelief.

A lot of emphasis is placed on study abroad, even from the time prospective students and their parents make the trek to campus to take a tour. Visiting families are marched by the outside of the study abroad office in Bennett Hall to peer through the window and see the hundreds of blue folders that line the wall -- and they appropriately ooh and ah over the sheer number of programs and countries that Penn makes available to its students.

And it is a fantastic option for those students for whom it is right, with the administration making it as easy as possible to attend a program at any number of exotic and far-off locales and get credit for courses taken. Many students often rave when they return from their globetrotting semester abroad. But it just is not right for me.

Last spring, I, too, jumped on the study abroad bandwagon. Along with a good portion of my friends, after returning from winter break I scrambled to get professor recommendations, to write the essay and fill out all the appropriate forms. I decided on a country -- England -- which I felt most appropriate for continuing my studies in English and identified a program using its urban location as the clincher in the decision.

I experienced the requisite excitement when I received an email from the study abroad office saying I had been accepted into the program and began to fantasize about afternoon teas and whistle-blowing bobbies and rides on the tube. What I had not before factored into my decision were the too-large classes, the less-than-ideal living situation, and yes -- the four months I would be giving up at Penn -- that now became so apparent.

During high school, I dreamed of the possibility of coming to Penn for my four undergraduate years, and worked so hard to get here. And it seemed counterproductive that I was contemplating an entire semester away from this place that I had so come to love for what would amount to inferior classroom instruction and a vacation in London.

When I first told people I had chosen not to accept admission into the abroad program, I most often got that conciliatory smile, the, "Sorry you weren't accepted" shoulder shrug. But after a somewhat abbreviated and perhaps convoluted explanation of the program's academic emphasis not matching my own, and a deep attachment to Penn compelling me to stay, you would have thought I had three heads. I never thought it was such a completely radical notion to want to spend four years of one's undergraduate education at a U.S. university and a top notch one at that.

I am really content, and yes, even relieved in my decision to stay in Philadelphia at a time when I feel like I am just beginning to carve out my niche on campus. While my friends begin to pack for Lyon and Sydney and Brussels, I look forward to another semester of being challenged in the classroom, exploring the city and feeling comfortable in my newly independent skin.

Call me a homebody, a creature of comfort, short sighted or even provincially minded, but the way I figure it, my time spent here at Penn is too short as it stands. My European adventure will have to wait.

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