My name is Kaleigh Emery. I am a senior at Northern Arizona University. I major in Broadcast Journalism, and have a minor in Electronic Media and Film. I came to NAU because I want to be a sideline reporter for the NHL. Now, from this information, you would probably be thinking, “why in the world would she be studying abroad in the Netherlands, if she wants to cover Hockey!” Well, I’ll tell you why.
My whole life, I have always wanted to travel. I wanted to see the world, see what things were out there, and see different cultures. When I was still in High School, I wanted to plan a trip to Europe, but money was my number one problem. After coming to college, I still wanted to study abroad, but it was looking like Australia was my only option. Totally not opposed to going there. I soon realized that when working for the local news station, by life became non-stop. I was working all the time, and I never had time to slow down. The idea of wanting to study abroad, slowly came to a halt.
Freshman year, I met this girl in my Theatre 101 class. She just so happened to work at the same news station as I did. Sure enough, we became like sisters.
So we skip a year or two, when she is a junior and I am a senior. We are best friends, used to live together and all that jazz. I go over to her dorm one night, when she tells me that she has the opportunity to study abroad in Limerick, Ireland. My first response was something like, “I don’t think that is a good idea because you have things going so good for you right now, you are on the right path, blah blah blah.” It seemed to be one excuse after the other as of why she shouldn’t go.
It comes time to around September, close to October. Sierra applies for the University of Limerick. Plenty of fights later, I understand where she is coming from.
Well, one day after class, one of my friends Alexa told me that she was going to study abroad in the Netherlands. My first thought is, “well that’s cool.” It was cool. She told me something that I will never forget. She said, “Dude, if you don’t go, you will regret it for the rest of your life. Go. You will never have an opportunity like this.”
So, me being me, I went home, got on the computer and did some research. Ten minutes later, I am on the phone with an advisor asking if I can come over to talk about studying abroad.
About an hour after that phone call, I was texting my boyfriend Alex about it. He was shocked to say the least. I kept thinking about what Alexa told me, and how important those words really are. Still to this day, I think about what she said, and know how true it is.
Time flew so fast, that before I knew it, I was applying for NHTV in Breda, Netherlands.
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