Journal From Abroad: Finding more questions than answers in Sydney

Maria Leznicki, a junior in the College of Arts and Sciences, is studying abroad in Sydney, Australia.

There are these white striped crosswalks placed randomly on Sydney streets, away from intersections, that I have come to depend on. Stepping foot onto them every car/bike/dog roaring toward you at whatever speed must come to a halt. Generally, traffic never stops for you, no matter how much Herbal Essence shampoo you use and so the power trip makes me feel almost cathartic; just now fully aware of how little of my own life I can fully control apart from such dependable aspects of Australian traffic.

I had come to study abroad with some ‘Great Expectations.’ Oddly enough, Magwich, of Dickens’ so titled novel, tried every twist and turn imaginable to avoid such a trip fearing the penal colony that then was Australia would take away his identity. For me, coming here was the exact opposite. I was to wander around, reevaluate my positions, my beliefs and become a much grander, better person for it. Unfortunately, such finding of yourself is much better left to celluloid.

It seems to be instead more of an un-finding of yourself stripping off layers of you back to a more developmental, dependent stage. All the sudden, you’re all alone searching for belonging, community, but you’re trapped more than ever; much greater than the effects of going away to college for the first time, as suddenly there’s a whole new culture in the mix.

There’s no Thanksgiving, Halloween or football but rugby and new words that are stuttered all around you and you’re not sure if these people really, really like you or are making fun of you so harshly that you want to cry to your mom. Suddenly she’s more in your life than ever, as weekly you spend all your money, your father accusing you of being ‘financially aggressive,’ and you have to call home again and again begging for a loan because getting a part-time job in a foreign country takes a lot more than a questionnaire or urine test.

These feelings flood you, and you discover you’re not alone, though this doesn’t necessarily make it any easier. Suddenly, the boy who was convinced from third grade he was going to be a doctor, the girl already admitted into law school and the business major who only had money on his eyes since he first was the banker in Monopoly, are not sure about their future either. There are too many possibilities now the creativity you all lost in fourth grade when you dropped your books in front of the class is coming back to haunt you. And especially you, who never knew what you wanted to be in the first place, are more lost than ever.

Every incident you experience is not necessarily good either, but you hear yourself saying, ‘well that sucked, but I’m glad it happened.’ It stays your mantra, even still after the spring break trip where (true story) one person loses a passport, another is hospitalized for severe sinusitis and you all get stuck in your rental car on the wrong side of the street in some unfamiliar national forest flooded with kangaroos and wallabies, who, with their numbers, lose any degree of exoticism. The trip continues with homelessness in the subzero temperatures of winter in New Zealand, a 16-year-old hitchhiker you kindly pick up steals your camera, and suddenly you’re missing your best friend from fourth grade whom you haven’t talked to in eight years. You’re ‘glad it happened,’ you state. ‘It was an adventure,’ though, of course, it sucked the whole time, even if it is your favorite memory from your semester.

And that’s when you discover that wherever you are, life can and does suck, but you are truly glad it happened. It’s thrilling to be a part of such an age where you have no ability whatsoever to predict what happens next, and you realize it’s OK not to know what you want to be when you grow up, or next month, or tomorrow even, because after all, you are still young.

It’s funny that as I write this, U2’s ‘I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For’ is coming on the radio, as that is clearly not the case either. It’s more realizing that you don’t know what you’re looking for and coming to terms with that concept admitting that in the long run you may have just as easily overlooked it in the past as expect to fall upon it in the future.

I guess instead all I have to fall into is my white striped crosswalks, knowing that traffic will at least stop for me there. That is, of course, until I return to the States and am completely blank and ready for the future with open arms, as I look both ways before I cross.