Balancing School and Travel Plans

One of the most challenging things about studying abroad is balancing class and traveling. When you arrive to
a new country all you want to do is to go out and explore, but you also have to remind yourself that you are also
there for courses. The best way to balance it all out is to plan ahead and be organized in order to be able to do
well in your classes and at the same time enjoy your time in the country of your stay. 

Before I arrived to Scotland, I made sure I looked over the class syllabus and wrote down important dates on my
calendar for quizzes, final exams, and excursions to make sure I was able to effectively plan around those dates
for my own traveling purposes. Being that this was my first time traveling outside of the country I became so
eager to try and visit as many surrounding countries as possible over the weekends, but after being in Scotland
for the first week I knew that it wouldn’t be as easy as I thought it would. 

Depending on the class curriculum and schedule, you will be able to see if you have extra time to travel after
class or visit other countries over the weekend.I know for me I had class M-W from 10am-4pm and Thursdays
were excursion days. So reasonably speaking I only had Friday-Sunday as me time, but unfortunately we had
quizzes every Monday morning so visiting other countries for only one day, since I would leave sometime on
Friday and return on Sunday, I knew that I would not get to explore as much as I would like and I would also feel
very tired from traveling to be able to study well for my quizzes. Aside from getting a feel of how to manage my
time in Scotland from being there the first week, I began to interact with other students in the program and see
what they planned on doing on their free time. After speaking with a few students, I came to the conclusion that
if I came to study in Scotland then why not really get to know every city and landmark in Scotland over
challenging myself to visit other countries in basically a day. 

Happily, I found a group of students who were also going to focus on only traveling in Scotland so that’s what we
did every weekend. I made sure that I kept up with my readings/studying during the days I had class so I could
enjoy my weekends and not worry about having to study last minute Sunday nights. At first, we would all come
together and do research on the places to visit in scotland, which were mainly cities and up north where it was
more of islands and mountain areas. The first weeks, we would take trains to the cities and walk to see architecture,
museums, and landscape pertaining to that city, which was fairly easy. When we wanted to go up North to see the
islands and mountain terrains we found that it would be a bit more difficult since we did not have a car. We decided
to book tours that went to places we wanted to see and it was honestly the best thing ever. The tours ranged from
4-12hrs and were fairly cheap. I really felt that I explored Scotland better when we did tours since the tour guides
were local people and knew what was worth seeing and where to eat when we made stops. 

Overall, I felt that I got a good insight on Scotland. Although I really wanted to visit other countries, I think it was
a much better idea to really explore Scotland. I would suggest that if you are trying to visit other countries I would
do so before or after the program to allow yourself time to explore well those countries as well. Make sure to keep
track of important dates, do research, and speak to other students to be able to join others on weekend trips. 

Stirling Castle 

Evolutionary timeline project

Isle of Skye tour

By: Ashley Ugarteche