Embracing Embarrassment and Discomfort
SA: Ibero-American University of Mexico, Mexico
Mia, one of the Semester Abroad Correspondents, shares her experience abroad during the Spring 2025 semester. Follow along with the group of correspondents on our blog and look out for their images on the @pennabroad Instagram feed.
Going into my abroad experience I tried to not to have too many expectations or specific things I HAD to do. I wanted to feel open to adapting to the experience of truly living in a new place. But the one goal I had before heading to Mexico City or La Ciudad de México (CDMX) was to truly improve and use my Spanish. Like many people who grew up in the US. I have somewhat studied Spanish for years in high school classes, but before coming to college I had never really internalized the language beyond the random words shouted in the kitchens at restaurants I worked in high school. Though you can find English in CDMX, I have loved the experience of conducting most of my daily life, making friends, and having conversations with strangers in a language that is still not fully quite comfortable for me. On my bus ride through the city to school I’ve learned to shout “La siguiente por favor!” to signal to the driver that I need to get off the bus at the next stop.
My friends at Penn can testify before leaving I was just smallest bit terrified about having all my courses in Spanish. At Penn and at Ibero-Americana University, I study philosophy specifically political and moral philosophy. Something I love about philosophy is the way the discipline embraces conflict and language to iterate on new ideas and arguments in pursuit of understanding the world around us and lives we are living. Classes themselves feel almost alive in a way. This dynamic academic culture of debate and analysis is also present in my classes at Ibero, though now in Spanish. No longer do the unique nuances of language and debate come easily for me as I struggle through attempting to provide an intelligent or at times simple intelligible critique of Heidegger. I have realized so much of my experience of college thus far has been shaped by my comfortability and familiarity with the English language as something I can play with without much thought.
And yet I love it. Though frustrating at times, I am so grateful that I am forced to listen more and think more concretely before speaking. Philosophy and writing itself is shaped so deeply by the language of the texts that even reading texts that I have read before in English feels like an entirely new experience. In Spanish often you do not need to include a word referring to the specific subject because the verb is conjugated in a way that makes the subject redundant. For example, “we think” can be translated as “pensamos” without the “nosotros”. For me when reading philosophical texts in Spanish, the action seems to take priority in a new way. So, when the author chooses to in fact include the subject this is a deliberate choice in a way, calling your attention to who is doing the thing.
Especially in the currently world of technology and connection it can be so easy to stay in what feels comfortable, but I think my favorite part of studying abroad so far is letting myself be uncomfortable. As red as my face gets sometimes in class as I trip over words explaining my idea, hoping someone understands me, I am so grateful for this discomfort. The past weekend sitting in the park near my apartment I realized that for the whole evening with a new friend also studying abroad but from Barcelona, I had been able to genuinely engage in conversation about our lives, our hopes, our beliefs all in Spanish. Though there had been times when in my tired state, I flipped around pronouns accidently saying, “I had told you”, instead of “you had told me” to a very confused response, I had been living in a new language, a language which is slowly becoming a new way of expressing myself. I feel as if I have found a new way of being in the world, new people and ideas and ways of talking – all my favorite things. My discomfort is allowing me to, in a cliché, but very real way, both understand something new about myself and the world around.
To anyone considering a less common study abroad program or scared about language or being somewhere new, do it. The reality is you will be uncomfortable. You will probably say the wrong thing. But that discomfort can be good and even necessary.
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