I made it!!! I am finally in Fairbanks, Alaska. After 3 plane rides, a 13-hour layover in Seattle, and not sleeping for almost the full 24 hours that I was in the various airports and airplanes, I have finally made it. For those of you that don't know why I'm here, I will explain. When I first got to college, I knew I wanted to study abroad. What I later found out was that the only places I could go to study criminal justice would be London for international law or Poland for cybersecurity. I wasn't interested in either, so I was kind of bummed out. Later on I found out about a program called National Student Exchange (NSE). Instead of studying internationally, you can study at another university somewhere in the U.S., Canada, or certain U.S. territories. My first instinct was to look and see what universities in Virginia were a part of this program, but I didn't see anything I was interested in. After that, I thought "Maybe this isn't for me." Then I thought about my family that lives up in Alaska. I laughed to myself and thought "That's crazy. What are the chances of that being a possibility?" I looked at the list of universities involved in NSE and saw University of Alaska - Fairbanks (UAF) listed. I thought about it for a while and finally decided to at least apply and see what would happen. I talked to my family in Alaska about it, and they thought it would be great to have me up here for a semester. They even offered to let me stay with them while I'm up here. Fast forward to spring semester last year. I'm sitting in class when I get the phone call saying I've been accepted. I can spend a semester in Alaska. I was thrilled. So here I am. I am spending my semester in Fairbanks taking classes at UAF. 2 criminal justice classes, 2 humanities classes, and 1 psychology class. My family is super excited that I am here, and I am super excited to be with them (partially because of the cute dogs, haha). My classes don't start until next week, so right now I am getting settled into the house, looking for textbooks, and most importantly, learning how to drive on the snow and ice. I have never seen this much snow in my life. And it's cold. Being in South Carolina, 30 degrees is cold. This is colder. 30 degrees would be warm here. Yesterday it was -25 degrees. NEGATIVE TWENTY FIVE!!!!!! Can you even fathom how cold that is? And I think it's supposed to get colder this weekend. Even colder!!! I did come prepared with jackets and boots, so that's good. But it's still cold. I am currently wrapped in 3 blankets with fuzzy socks. Anyways, I am very excited for this semester. I will be taking lots of pictures and posting them. I'm still deciding on if I'm going to post them to the blog posts themselves or just create another tab for a gallery. When I decide, I will let y'all know. Well, this will be exciting! Come back next week to see how my first week of classes goes!
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AuthorStudent at the University of South Carolina studying criminal justice, French, and psychology. Archives
August 2019
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