Editor’s note: This column was submitted by a member of the UT community. 

We stood in the misting rain, looking down into a valley of fall yellowed trees and small family farms, straining our brains to translate a Spanish legend being told to us by our enthusiastic tour guide. Picking up the words “ojos” and “amor,” we deciphered that he was speaking about the eyes painted on the side of the mountain in front of us and how they stood as a testament of a tragic, forbidden love story. What a perfect place to experience heartbreaking love. As I stood in this small, unexploited town of Cuenca, Spain, I acknowledged that this feeling of nostalgic bliss would live in my mind forever when I thought back to my study abroad experience. While my time in Madrid will forever be special to me — the smell of rain rolling in off my balcony into my tiny one bedroom apartment in the heart of the city, the sound of busking opera singers on Gran Vía, the rush of metro air that rises up as the train brakes to a stop in front of you — the times outside of Madrid were just as memorable. 

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The exaggerated, garish cathedrals peppered every Spanish city, ones we knew were built amongst an impoverished town offering all it had to the reverence of the Divine. Standing on the side of a mountain at sunset in the city of Chefchaouen, Morocco, the call to prayer echoed off every little blue house. The house of Portuguese writer, José Saramago, in Lisbon — a man whose novel “Blindness” would make me ache for an entire month when I read it the next year. A Christmas performance in the center of Brussels, Belgium, listening to “La Vie en Rose,” the wind biting at our cheeks, as we snacked on the few pieces of Galler chocolates we were able to afford. In each place, I left pieces of myself that I will always long to reunite with. 

Back in Madrid, I studied hard in small coffee shops and in the university computer labs. Taking a mechanical engineering class at Comillas Pontifical University proved to be quite different than my classes at UT. Our professor took two grades: a midterm and a final. All the homework we were given was optional (and in Spanish), pushing me to adapt academically to a new system of learning and forcing me to ask the Spanish students around me for help. This taught me so much about myself as a student, and when I came back to Austin, I saw my grades and my confidence in my communication skills increase. 

The Spanish education system taught me what to prioritize when studying and that studying longer doesn’t mean studying effectively. The international students I took classes with globalized my way of thinking about school, as they repeated over and over that Americans “work too much and live too little.” As I focused more on the happiness of my life outside of classes, I re-energized and reinvigorated myself as an academic, making me more focused on learning while in the classroom. 

I believe my experience in Madrid taught me how to effectively avoid burnout by, well, not burning out. While working is important and studies should be taken seriously, siestas and late, long dinners with friends are sometimes just as important. Experience the joy in all of life, in every class and study session, hike among the trees, solo walk through a museum, in every pot of paella shared amongst old friends, and in every conversation with new ones. 

Meyer is a mechanical engineering senior and a peer advisor at Cockrell’s International Engineering Education office from Conroe, Texas.