The Very First Step

I sat down in my first class of the semester waiting for the teacher to start talking. I was actually really upset because I had gotten an email from the financial aid office about an event to learn about my options for studying abroad as a student with below average money and I wasn't able to go because of the first class of the semester. I had always wanted to travel, one of my bucket list things. Last year I had looked at semester abroad opportunities in Paris but with everything happening in Paris I'm glad that idea didn't last. In fact, spending a whole semester abroad and away from home was daunting. I figured if I was going to study abroad I should start out small. The teacher started class with an announcement about a study abroad opportunity saying "It's three weeks long and in Italy. We'll be visiting ancient archaeological greek sites". My jaw dropped! Here I was hoping for a study abroad trip that would be perfect for me and it suddenly falls in my lap. That week all I could think about was the trip and whether or not I, a broke girl from the boon-docks, even deserved something like this to happen to me. I decided, with much convincing from my parents, to let them decide whether or not I deserved it. I spent the next week agonizing over essay questions for the application abroad. The day before the essays were due I scraped everything I had worked on, wrote whole new essays feverishly, and sent it in. It probably wasn't the best idea to hand in last minute essays for something that big but I couldn't, in good conscience, hand in the crap I had been working on. I handed in the application thinking that I had done my best and if it didn't work out then....well I already knew I would be crushed if it didn't but I was telling myself that it wouldn't matter.