Submitted by Kayla Neiderfer on the 2016 winter session program in New Zealand sponsored by the Department of Animal and Food Sciences…
As my study abroad experience winds down to the final few days, I’ve started to think about what has really happened over the last few weeks. Before studying abroad, someone very close to me pointed out that I really never tried anything adventurous. I would only have fun inside of my comfort zone, and was afraid to push new boundaries in fear of their unknown consequences. Over the past few years, this person had tried to convince me to become more adventurous, but I always refused his activity suggestions. When I decided to apply for study abroad, it was the first adventurous thing I had done in my entire life.
Throughout the past month, I tried to keep him in mind when new opportunities came my way. In the past two weeks, I feel I’ve experienced life so much more than I have in all twenty years before now. Never in my life would I have thought I would have done any of the things I have recently accomplished, but I am so happy I have. Traveling here to New Zealand has given me a new perspective on life. As cliché as that sounds, New Zealand has open my eyes to a new world of adventure that I have been hiding from my entire life. I have already started making plans to travel around the United States the summer after I graduate to see all the amazing things that are in my own country that I have never seen before.