Kyle Siemers

Getting to study away as a natural science student was something I never thought could be done. I had a professor tell me in front of the whole class that “Chemistry majors don’t study away!” I was very lucky with this program as it satisfied both my major requirements and my IHON courses I needed. I was surprised to find how helpful my non-major courses were to developing the skills that my chemistry courses demand. The Wang Center and my advisors were very helpful to helping me make studying away work despite a rigid four-year plan so that I could graduate on time, take all the classes I needed, take classes I wanted, and feel confident doing so. In the end, studying away helped me be a better student and global citizen, for which I am so thankful and I’m exceedingly happy it all worked out so well!

Find something you like to do on your own! Sometimes it’s nice to take a break, or if you need a change in pace from doing the same things with the same people every day. For me, it was finding a classical music concert or taking a walk in a park just to listen to podcasts.

I was surprised by what breaks actually felt like! The nature of our tutorials at Oxford left me to work out my own schedule for working on my essays, which meant that different days ended up being my “weekends.” While it was difficult at first, actually taking the time to not do school work, or grad school application work, or PLU-job work was so valuable to not only my ability to jump back into all those things afterward, but also to allow myself to go enjoy new things about where I was living that I might not have gotten to do otherwise because I was too focused on work.