Three years ago, I picked the pumpkin spice latte of countries for my Study Abroad semester. English-speaking. Moderate climate. Bars and clubs. Large American expat population.
Scotland.
But I don’t regret going there instead of Kenya or Thailand or some other ambitious cross-cultural destination. Going somewhere kinda boring pushed me to make it special. I didn’t know many people and the ones that I did were satisfied soaking in the singular city (Edinburgh) where we’d landed. At the start, that felt limiting because I wanted to stretch my legs and get the most out of that special time.
Mostly by accident, I was pushed into the clear solution to my problem. I invited a girl to join me on a trip up North to the Highlands. We needed to board a 6:30AM train to get there. She texted me to cancel just a few minutes before it would disembark, leaving me standing on the platform at 6:29 with a choice.But it wasn’t really a choice at all, the answer was obvious: go alone.
I did, and it was fantastic. I did the same thing most weekends after that. That winter, I climbed higher mountains and took more photographs than I ever had before.
Plenty of other really cool things happened. I made some great friends, I have some stupid crazy stories from nights on the town like any college student, and I read some great books.But the big lesson, the one that I’ll tattoo on my ass when I come up with a pithy way to say it, is this: Make interesting life happen, and others will want to join. And if they can’t make the early train, go anyway and love your own company.
P.S. Words and Photos original. There are a lot of sheep in Scotland, in case you didn’t know.
