Process and Fun Hassles
It is so much fun to be telling you all about all that I have been through. Like I’d said in my previous post as well, any experience with Study Smart is going to be wonderful!
So… Where was I?
I told you about my decisions and about how Study Smart happened to me and about how I flew off to London. Hmm… Here is the story ahead.
I have always shied away from too much hassle. To be frank, if there’s a lot of hauch-pauch involved in a work, I’d rather not do it. So, when I had, finally, decided that I should go and study abroad, a part of my mind had given a truly jaundiced look that should have conveyed all that my inhibitions feared. What do I do instead? I drag me and my parents to this hi-fi looking office that goes by the name of “Study Smart”. And they spoilt me too! IELTS, they helped with, through their own IELTS Training centre. Application, they processed it! Admission dcouments, They arrnanged it! Visa, they prepared the file! Forex, they provided it! Even before I went abroad, Study Smart put me in touch with students studying there already. A car picked me up from the airport and deposited me in a homely accommodation, where people already knew me and were all geared to throw a welcome party.
Butter smooth!
And, once there in London, I got another list of formalities to be fulfilled. And panic struck.
What am i going to do? Who am I going to ask? Where on earth do I even begin?
Even before I called my parents, to sort this mess out or –better- to tell them that I am booking a return ticket, I called my oversea education counsellor up and dumped all my mess on her.
“We have your back,” was the response I got before a list of instructions replaced the list I termed as
“Mess”.
You see, when you go there, you need to register with the college and then with a General Practiotioner- a doctor nearby. There is your National Insurance Number to be taken care of. It would be better if you open a bank account and check-in with the Job Center to get help with the part-time jobs. Then I was advised to get an NSU card as well. And, while I did run around myself, I knew where I had to run. And that was more than the help I asked for. What was more than I asked for was the fact that I had connections. You know who I had to thank, right?
And, while doing all this running around and finding the shortest way out of all the “Mess”, I stumbled upon so many, many aspects of myself. I found that I was good at dealing with people. I was even better at organizing and prioritising everything I had to get done.
We are so used to the place and people of the place we were born in. At home, in our own country and state, with our own friends, we know what we can do and not. We know them and they know us in that sub-conscious manner in which you know the one of your kind. But out there, where there were so many of various nationalities and culture, and you were in a totally unfamiliar place, you have to find things in yourself that will sustain you. Finding those things is like a discovery of your self. You feel a new kind of a confidence when you know that you are capable of handling anything thrown at you. And I’d signed-up for this, exactly.
Remember what they say, “When in Rome, do as Romans do”?
Studying abroad made me re-coin that. I say,
“When in there, do whatever the hell you have always wanted to do.”
And this is a gift I got, I believe.
