As I prepared to leave Monroe for Germany eight months ago, I did what so many students studying abroad do. I posted a picture on my Instagram account. I then began the grueling task of sitting on a plane for nine hours, unable to keep track of likes and comments.

I will be the first to admit that I have long been victim to the ever-common cellphone addiction, but I realized soon in my time here that deleting social media apps from my phone and focusing more on enjoying my experiences has allowed me to have a much more immersive experience. Rather than ensuring everyone else knew what I had done that day, I simply did it. There is also less pressure to keep up with what looks “cool” for social media. 

I could take 20 minutes setting up the perfect pose for an Insta-worthy photograph, or I could put my phone back into my pocket and experience wonderful destinations through my own eyes, not the camera on my phone. 

This semester, I found myself worrying less about how my experience can look on Instagram and more about what it means to me and how I can share it with others in other ways. Instead of posting pictures daily to make it look like I haven’t stopped traveling in months, I am more than open about the fact that I sometimes have weeks where I don’t leave Tubingen at all. That’s okay with me. 

When I was a freshman in college, I met a teacher who had just returned from living in China for two years. 

She was telling me and a small group of other students interested in international travel about her experience and mentioned that she never knew what to say when people asked how or what her trip was like. It wasn’t always extravagant. It wasn’t always notable. It was just her life, “and how can you describe your everyday life other than just that? Normal,” she said. 

Though the excitement of things I get to do and see here never quite goes away, what would have once earned a tweet or a post on my Instagram is now nothing more than a regular Tuesday afternoon. 

 — Shannon Rabotski is a junior at Drake University.  She is spending the year studying abroad in Tubingen, Germany. She can be reached at shannon.rabotski@drake.edu.