Alumni Spotlight: Linnéa Ryan

I’m so glad I chose St. Andrews as my host university because I believe they have a lot of tradition instilled into the social life of the student body that most other universities lack. There are a whole host of traditions, and traditional events, since the university is literally older than my own country, but the one that impacted me the most was that of being included in an academic family. As a study abroad student, you have the option to be “adopted” by a set of “parents” who are students generally in 3rd or 4th year of university. During orientation you socialize at society events, or just in pubs, and have the chance to meet these people, and if you click, they become your go-to points for questions about St. Andrews life and help you to acclimate. There are some other fun and surprising aspects involved with being a son or daughter, but I’ll not ruin the surprise for you should you go.

You absolutely should try everything at least once. I mean that in terms of opportunities, traditional events, as well as foods. Don’t be scared to take life by the horns and just jump right into the mess of everything. Join every society that strikes your fancy, it’ll help you meet new people with similar interests and often they hold functions or outings for you to fill your schedule with. If your residence or program offers a free dinner, night at the theater, or cultural excursions, absolutely go!

It can be tempting to just spend your time off from studying catching up with friends or hanging at the local pub, but those things will always be there. Now’s your chance to do some things that may have seemed fairly wacky to you in your home country, but you never know if you’ll have fun until you’re actually there in the moment, so give it a go!

I luckily had the opportunity to visit many different cities throughout the UK, from Bristol to London to Liverpool, thanks to my program’s homestay weekend as well as my own curiosity, but favorite excursion of all had to be the week during spring break that my childhood best friend and I met up to travel to Berlin, Germany together. Thanks to budget airlines we made the journey and were able to stay for five days.

Berlin has a lot of great, free walking tours that we took advantage of. Through local eyes we were shown sides of the city from a German perspective that I had never considered before. From art, to film, to food, every aspect of Berlin was unique, engaging, and humbling. I would recommend Berlin as a destination for any student studying abroad in Europe.

I think there’s a sort of pressure placed upon students who study abroad to have the “time of their life” and for every little experience they have to be glowing and wonderful, and that if they have any complaints at all they may come off as ungrateful. However changing your location to a different country doesn’t just make any struggles you may regularly face at home such as learning disabilities, medical problems, or mental health issues go away, and I know a lot of students can fall into a trap of attempting to gloss them over and act as if they’re not struggling. I myself fell into that trap, and felt as if I couldn’t ask for help, when in hindsight I totally should have.

While my experience as a whole was indeed life-changing and probably could be filed under the best year of my life, certain things definitely could have gone better and been easier if I had just admitted that I was struggling. Most programs do have systems in place for struggling students like that, however they aren’t overtly advertised so some students don’t know. If you are having a hard time however, my advice is to bite the bullet and speak up because while studying abroad is absolutely great, it’s not always perfect.