Exchange at Penn She'll Be Alright

Kevin, one of the Exchange at Penn Correspondents, shares his experience at Penn during the Spring 2024 semester. Follow along with the group of correspondents on our blog and look out for their images on the @pennabroad Instagram feed.

So when you don’t want everything to come to an end, but it does and you get sentimental, we say she’ll be right. It means everything will be fine. Good Aussie terminology.

But I’m not sure if she’ll be right. Writing this final blog, I reflect and look beyond the last 6 months in the US, including 5 at Penn. It would be an understatement to say that 2024 has thus far been the happiest moments of my life. Seriously.

I did a lot of things. Here is me when I auctioned my face off and got pied in the face.

I look amazing, I know.

But the thing I am most proud of, is that I would never have signed up for things like this. Never. But this exchange experience opened me up to places where I thought I could never reach, places to where I thought I didn’t belong and to places where I thought I could never understand.

That is something, don’t you think?

Moving on, one thing that I love doing but people judge me for is wearing Birkenstocks all year round. It works in Sydney and I think it works in Philly too. But the looks I got when I jumped into a pile of snow in my Birkenstocks, that was crazy. Here is me on a cold day in January, dripping my Birkenstocks.

You will also meet truly amazing people from all over the world. You name it. Spain? Italy?
Singapore? South Korea? Penn will have them and dare I say, this network you build across
the world means that someday when you decide to travel to Europe, you probably won’t need
to book a hotel. (Italians were a little bit more fussy about this and they made sure that I
wouldn’t put pineapple on my pizza as a condition for letting me stay at their houses.)

On another note, take a look at this photo. Yes, my cheeks are very puffy, I know. But this smile was only brought to me by those Wawa chicken strip hoagies at 2am. Make sure to put chipotle sauce and grab yourself one bag of Herr’s Honey Cheese Curls. They. Are. Amazing.

Finishing off, my experiences have been truly amazing at Penn. August of 2023, I was contemplating on taking this opportunity because I wasn’t sure if I wanted to leave my friends behind back home. Some of you may also be having these thoughts. But trust me, your friends will be the last thing you will be thinking about at Penn, because you will have so many new ones here. So, what are you waiting for?