I Didn’t Change the World at Penn, but…
Semester Abroad: Exchange at Penn
Hanxi, one of the Exchange at Penn Correspondents, shares her experience here at Penn during the Fall 2025 semester. Follow along with the group of correspondents on our blog and look out for their images on the @pennabroad Instagram feed.
As finals, projects and presentations approach, my exchange semesters at Penn are quietly reaching its end. It’s a strange feeling to think back to that day at the airport, standing at the gate and turning my boarding pass over in my hands. Back then, “Penn” was still just a word printed in bold letters, and I cannot stop imagining who I would become here. Maybe I would get a big internship offer right away? Maybe I would travel across the country on weekends? Maybe I would turn into someone who is ultra-social and ultra-productive? But reality had a different plan for me, which was quieter, steadier, and honestly, better.
And the first “out of plan” things come from the classroom. I didn’t become the student in my imagination who somehow always sits in the same spot and keeps coming up with hard questions. Most days, I was simply trying to keep up with discussions, tracing the ideas, and convincing myself that “bringing coffee to the class” could be counted as a personality as well. But there’s something addictive about Penn lectures. One moment you’re fine, the next moment you’re debating what a flying pig means to AI or brainstorming how to learn Agile models from making paper planes with your teammates . Every class ends like a giant brain-shake, and I always leave thinking, “Okay… I definitely didn’t sign up for all that, but I’m glad I did.”
Outside the classroom, Penn had its own rhythm. I see the locust walk’s scenes from now-covered quiet to bright spring, and then to the layers of red-gold leaves in fall. It turns out that I didn’t manage to travel across the U.S. the way I once imagined, but Locust Walk, Franklin Field, and Houston Hall already felt like small worlds worth exploring. And one day, with sunlight falling through the trees, flyers rustling in the breeze, and someone practicing music in the distance, it hit me:
I am really part of it.
And honestly, it wasn’t just Penn’s pretty spots. It is more about the people I met here. I didn’t exactly shake hands with dozens of recruiters, but I’d walk into office hours planning to ask one question and end up talking about half the universe with my professor. Group projects turned strangers into teammates and then into friends; clubs taught me things I didn’t know I needed; events exposed me to perspectives I’d never considered, voices I wouldn’t have met anywhere else.
We shared dinners, and on some evenings we talked about my future while swinging back and forth under the quiet sky. That, to me, is the real gift of youth: we have those sleepless nights spent not because we had to, but because we believed tomorrow could be even fuller, brighter, and more ours.
Penn pushed me in ways that weren’t loud or dramatic, but they reshaped me all the same. It wasn’t about checking boxes anymore, it is about the version of yourself you’ll meet.
Not every journey has to end with changing the world, but Penn’s one lets you see the world, and yourself, with a little more clarity.