I had never been abroad before this program, and that alone made it feel like a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity I knew I needed to take for myself.
There is a difference between wanting to travel and actually believing you will get to, and for most of my life, I existed in the gap between those two things. So when this program appeared, it did not feel like just another item on a school checklist. It felt like a door I had been waiting for someone to open for me. But what excited me most was not just the chance to see Japan. It was the chance to finally start doing something I had always wanted to do: create content.
For a long time, I had held myself back. I did not know what to post about, and honestly, I was embarrassed. I worried about how people who already knew me — friends, family, people who follow me online would react if I suddenly started filming myself and posting more. Would they think it was silly? Would they wonder who I thought I was, putting myself out there like that? That fear had quietly kept me from ever starting, and it had been sitting with me for years, long before this program was ever on my radar.
Going into this program, my biggest nerve was the language barrier. I worried about navigating a country where I did not speak the language, about getting lost and about feeling helpless in a way I had never felt before. As it turned out, that fear was almost unfounded. Everyone we encountered was patient, kind and understanding, and it was never the obstacle I had built it up to be in my head. The real obstacle had always been the other one: the one about being seen. I just did not know yet that Japan was going to be the place that finally talked me out of it.
Two moments from this trip stay with me more than any other.
The first was visiting Itsukushima Shrine in Miyajima and standing in front of the O-Torii Gate. The moment I saw it, something shifted; it finally hit me that I was really in Japan. It was so beautiful that it almost did not feel real, and standing there looking up at it felt close to spiritual. I remember just standing still, unable to believe I was actually there, in that exact place, after wanting something like this for so long.
I think about how many years I spent dreaming about a moment like that one from my bedroom back home, scrolling through other people’s photos and wondering if a trip like this would ever actually be mine. Standing in front of that gate, it finally was. I do not think I will ever fully be able to explain that feeling to someone who was not there. It was not just seeing something beautiful. It was proof that I had made something I once thought was impossible into something real.
The second moment happened on our own time, away from the program schedule. Faith, Taylor and I walked across the bridge in Enoshima and sat by the water for a while. For those few minutes, we were not running between locations or pushing through crowds. It was just us and the view, completely still. There was no itinerary telling us where to be next, no group to keep up with and no photo we had to get for an assignment. I remember not wanting to talk much, and neither did they, like we all silently agreed the moment deserved quiet more than conversation. It is one of the simplest moments of the entire trip and also one of the ones I will remember the longest: a quiet pause that all three of us needed without realizing it. Sometimes the loudest, most meaningful parts of a trip end up being the quietest ones.
And then there was the day everything clicked with content creation. I filmed my first daily reel in Tokyo, and something about that day woke up a part of me I did not know was waiting to be woken up. I had so much fun filming throughout the day and editing it afterward that the embarrassment I had been carrying around for so long simply was not there anymore. I was not thinking about who might see it. I was just having fun making something I was proud of. Looking back, I think that was the real beginning of this entire trip for me, not the flight, not the first day, but that moment when I stopped overthinking and just let myself enjoy something I had wanted to do for years.
On the academic and professional side, I learned an enormous amount about content creation itself, how to actually find good angles, how to think about a shot before I take it and just how well travel content can perform when it is genuine rather than overly produced. I learned that the content people respond to most is rarely the most polished. It is the most honest. Those are skills I will carry directly into a career in entertainment PR, where understanding what makes content connect with an audience is half the job and where authenticity is becoming the thing brands and artists chase the hardest.
But the personal lessons from this trip go even deeper, and they are the ones I think will stay with me the longest. Before this program, I genuinely believed international travel was not something within reach for me, not realistically and not for someone like me. I do not think I could have told you exactly why I believed that; only that I did, in the quiet way you believe things about yourself without ever examining them closely. This trip proved that belief wrong, and it did it so thoroughly that I almost cannot remember what it felt like to think that way.
I fell completely in love with Japan to the point that I am now seriously considering an exchange program or some other way to stay there longer. More than anything, this trip showed me there is so much more to life than what exists at home. There are entire countries full of people I have not met, places I have not seen and experiences waiting for me that I would never have believed were possible two years ago. I think about the version of myself who almost talked herself out of applying to this program, and I wish I could tell her how much she had no idea was coming.
I want to travel constantly now. I want to meet people I would never have crossed paths with otherwise, and see places that, until two weeks ago, only existed for me as photos on a screen.
This experience means everything to me. I have spent a long time searching for some sense of purpose, quietly hoping it would just show up one day, and this program is the first thing that has truly given me one. I loved creating content. I loved writing about what I experienced, even the small, unremarkable parts of each day that I would have never thought to write down before. I plan to keep doing both — with every trip I take from this point forward and with every concert I attend.
This is not a one-time thing I did for a study abroad credit. It is the beginning of how I want to move through the rest of my life, and I do not say that lightly. Two weeks should not be enough to change how someone sees their entire future, and yet here I am, completely changed.
There’s also a part of this that goes beyond me. My dad loved to travel, but he never got the chance to leave the United States. I think about that a lot now. How something I sometimes took for granted, the idea that travel was even possible for me, was something he never got to experience. Doing this, falling in love with a country on the other side of the world, feels like something he would have wanted for me. I carry that with me now, every time I think about where I want to go next.
Looking ahead, I am seriously considering studying abroad again before I finish my degree, if the opportunity allows it. Longer term, I want a career that lets me travel, or even one that lets me live and work in Japan, somewhere I can return to the same streets and shrines that meant so much to me the first time.
Two weeks were enough to change how I see my own future. I can only imagine what longer would do, and I am no longer afraid to find out.
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