Asher Hagan

College is not a lot of time. Every student starts with 8,760 hours a year. Now, subtract the time reserved for essentials — sleeping, studying, complaining about that one class or eating — and what’s left is a measly number of leisurely hours. 

What to do with so little time? Fill it to the brink with experience. 

Every student has their preferred pastimes, such as parties, concerts or video games. While each has advantages and disadvantages, there’s one experience that is praised as the most profound and life-changing of them all — studying abroad. 

Studying abroad means meeting cool people with accents you’ve never heard, unlocking unfamiliar tastes and bypassing the ‘tourist’ label for an authentic cultural encounter. 

However, this idea of study abroad is overly idealistic. Before flying overseas, consider the baggage of studying abroad and explore other equally profound local experiences.  

Sixty-seven percent of students are hesitant about the costs of studying abroad, according to Terra Dotta’s Voice of the Students survey. The median cost for a study abroad program is between $7,000 and $15,000. And this doesn’t include things like airfare or passport fees.

“I have considered (study abroad), ” philosophy sophomore Vincent Martorelli said. “It would be helpful in my degree and career, (but) … it’d be ridiculously expensive.” 

Financial aid is often not enough to cover all the costs. Additionally, scholarships and grants designated for study abroad are limited and highly competitive.

This financial luggage is heavy and often leads to student debt. A survey found that more than half of students are willing to take up to $14,609 in student loans to afford studying abroad.

Even if you push past the price, the reality of studying abroad can be disappointing. Students tend to form close-knit groups with peers from the same country or program during study rather than immerse themselves with locals. Significant language and cultural barriers limit opportunities to meaningfully engage with the local community and culture.

So, what to do instead? Try staying home. Studying abroad falls under the umbrella of experiential learning, but this also includes things such as internships, undergraduate research, leadership roles and service learning that may be just as fulfilling for less expense. 

“(There should) be an authentic audience outside of the course for which the thing that you’re doing has some significance,” said Heather Wright, assistant director for Assessment and Experiential Learning.

Local internships, research projects and service-learning initiatives can have tangible impacts on the community while equipping students with practical skills.

Local experiential learning fosters community and allows students to tackle real-world challenges in a supportive environment. These experiences come with built-in opportunities to develop problem-solving skills and resilience. 

“High-quality experiential learning contains situations where there will be setbacks,” Wright said. “When you think about all the times when you’ve learned something really important, I imagine that every single thing … had some kind of significant challenge attached to it.”

Still, that’s not to say study abroad can’t incorporate these attributes. 

“There could be a study abroad opportunity that also has a research component (or) an engaged scholarship or community-based research project,” Wright said.

However, local experiential learning opportunities have fewer logistical and financial barriers. So, when picking out experiences to fill in your waning leisurely time, be more realistic than romantic. Many local experiences can be just as meaningful without the weighty baggage of studying abroad.

Kota is a computer science and business senior from Galveston, Texas.