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You are here: Home / Life / Study Abroad / The Semester That Changed My Life Felt Never Ending

The Semester That Changed My Life Felt Never Ending

January 7, 2020 //  by Rodrigo Polanco

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Any student in their rightful mind would cash out on the opportunity to go abroad and take a light semester to enjoy their experience in another country by partying, traveling and eating exotic food. Well, so did I. 

But, I wanted to do a little more and challenge myself in another country. 

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My parents are one of my biggest inspirations, and if they can make an opportunity out of nothing than I could too. 

 Watching my parents struggle in supporting their four children in a place that made it hard to feel welcomed led me to question the fundamentals of society and life in general. I felt the world come down on me. The place I grew up to love wasn’t as glorifying and trustworthy as I thought, but I knew there was still hope. My parents immigrated to the United States from Mexico and have been trying to make a living ever since. Even though they never made it past grade school, they push learning and education on us to help us achieve a better life than they can ever dream of.   

I hope the saying “the good things in life don’t come easy” is true because my undergrad years haven’t been a walk in the park. I’ve been jumping at every opportunity that has come my way to better myself, those around me and local communities. One of the many opportunities I have come across was the opportunity to study in Santiago, Chile. Little did I know that I was going to fight an uphill battle with barriers to jump over and hoops to go through.  

A few of those barriers were dealing with my upper-division classes. The unpleasant thing about my majoring in International Business is that I have to take classes like the Fundamentals of Finance and International Business Finance. It’s possible, but not easy.   

I thought my classes would be the hardest thing to deal with. The semester before going abroad, I had to handle my schoolwork and make sure I maintained my GPA. If it dropped by even .01, I wouldn’t be able to study abroad and would also need to change my major. Plus, I had to apply for my student VISA and pass the exam to get into my second major (Journalism) so I wouldn’t have to worry about it in my return.  

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In the meantime, I was involved in a few student organizations; two were in relation to my majors and another was a fraternity. I was promoted to Director of Internal Expansion and president for my fraternity the semester before, not to mention I was working a part-time job.  

My first instinct was to drop one of the positions, but I understood that the fraternity was going into a downfall with most of our older members graduating. It was a lot to handle, but I made sure that they knew that I was going to have a busy semester and wouldn’t be able to handle it all by myself without their support.  

Since I was going abroad, I decided to move back home for my Fall semester so I could save money to pay for my expenses and have extra spending money to travel overseas. After three years on my own, coming back to a traditional Mexican family was difficult. On top of struggling to make everything fit on my plate, I had responsibilities at home. I needed to help my parents around the house, handle their finances and translate documents from English to Spanish whenever they couldn’t understand.  

With proper planning and preparation, I survived the semester. My grandfather passing away made it more difficult, but I made sure to push through all the adversity. It required late nights where I would ride home around 3 a.m. in the rain and cold. There were times where I couldn’t control my body from shivering so much that my steering would move out of control. For safety reasons, I’d slow down and find a safe place to pull over. I’d do jumping jacks to warm-up my body before continuing on my way. 

 Ultimately, I made it abroad. My hard work and sacrifices paid off, plus they gave me a far better reward than I could have ever dreamed of. It was the most amazing experience of my life. Having the opportunity to travel to a completely different country, live like a local student and go through similar experiences was thrilling and eye-opening. 

After not being able to crash challenging courses like Economia Financiera and Comercio International, I took courses like Contemporary Latin American Marketing Strategies and Starting Up In Latin America. These courses gave me a wider picture of the world of business both globally and locally. I was challenged by going into the city to chat with locals to understand their daily lives better and see what daily challenges they face to create a business idea and go through the early stages of development. 

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One of my professors had connections and took exchange students into a business incubator to see how they worked. Another great experience was being able to watch a local rap battle hosted on campus for the semi-final round. Not to mention that the best food in Santiago was Peruvian food. Local food was good, but some plates were bland. Coming from a Mexican background, I love my herbs and spices, especially some good salsa. Surprisingly, there was no chile in Chile. I managed to survive off Tabasco sauce because that was the best they had.  

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Filed Under: Student Travel Study Abroad

About Rodrigo Polanco

Rodrigo studied both International Business and Journalism at San Diego State University. He enjoys going to concerts, exercising and riding his street bike in hopes to one day perform stunt tricks.

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