I vividly remember the strange mood that took over the Class of 2026 in the spring of our freshman year. Whispers of being able to do two study away semesters were spreading like the deadliest of plagues. Stories of the class above us doing two study aways, the first ones to be able to do so after COVID-19, seemed too good to be true. Suspicions did not take long to turn into curiosity. One by one, social science and humanities majors were declaring their big plans to go abroad for as many semesters as the Global Education Office allows them.

I (obviously) caught the bug too.

In freshman spring, I still needed to figure out many things about my college life. I had not yet decided what I wanted my major to be, who my friends were, or how long the drying cycle in A1C’s laundry room took. Every day felt like a treacherous journey to self-discovery that I was frankly getting bored of. Escaping to London, Paris, or Berlin, anywhere away from Abu Dhabi, felt like the solution to all those problems I had.

There was only a little time to dwell on this decision. The deadline for the application was right after the spring semester ended. The opportunity seemed too good to pass on – they truly seemed to be willing to let us study away twice. Since all my other friends appeared committed to leaving, the choice felt natural. I submitted my application, knowing that ‘the first study away semester almost always gets approved’, already planning my next escape to New York.

What I had not taken into account when I was writing that study away application was that figuring out college just needs time. Over the summer break, I was missing even the things I disliked most about NYU Abu Dhabi – the long library nights spent with my best friend stationed next to me, the endless walks in circles around campus, and Jan Ian from D1 asking me if I am (yet again) going to get Mongolian for lunch.

When Sophomore Fall rolled around, all the puzzle pieces came together. University life finally made sense. I had an academically challenging semester in a major I loved, friends who understood and supported me, and a campus life that, despite a quiet Saturday evening, satisfied all my life needs and social desires. I felt like I had finally found my place on campus and surrounded myself with my people.

Yet, with every great day I spent on campus, the closer the dreaded goodbyes approached. Everything and everybody I have come to love and appreciate was going to be gone by the time the last Nirvana shuttle to the airport departed.

Canceling study away was not a satisfactory option either. The whole campus was bound to change in the spring – nearly half of its biggest class was to disperse across the world, leaving a (reportedly) hollow feeling.

In freshman spring when I was looking at course equivalencies and housing options in Prague, I did not stop to consider what I would be missing out on in Abu Dhabi. I was not yet aware of the distance one feels from their home campus while studying away. I failed to anticipate that the budding friendships formed in Week 8 would be stopped in their tracks once I departed, only leaving hopes of a successful Senior Fall reunion. The regular dinners with friends I looked forward to will keep going without me, while I miss out on the inside jokes and daily anecdotes. The bed in which I forced friends to watch my favorite TV show will be occupied by somebody else, or even worse, be turned into a couch by my old roommate. Life in Abu Dhabi will grow around my absence, while I keep up the hope that I will have a place to return to once my great escape is over.

The main selling point of study away is the ability to interact with professors and students you would not meet in Abu Dhabi. You can sit in classes that do not exist in Abu Dhabi and discuss topics that are usually not of interest to your departments. The student life is vastly different as well, centered around the host city and its culture. On study away, you step out of so many of your comfort zones, with many opportunities to polish those rusty people skills that many of us lacked during Marhaba. You get to travel around places often fully inaccessible from Abu Dhabi, either due to distance, logistics, or visa requirements.

Yet, a great caveat comes with this deal. Studying away for two semesters, which I and many other members of the Class of 2026 decided to do, has the potential to set you back on both your academic and professional journey. This is especially true in terms of the relationships you want to build in Abu Dhabi. For two semesters, we get to interact with eight, usually incredible, professors who will never be able to be our capstone mentors or who are unlikely to write us a letter of recommendation. Most of our major electives get satisfied abroad, failing to form meaningful connections with NYUAD professors with knowledge in our fields. For two semesters, we missed out on having a campus job, which is important both financially and professionally to many of us. We also miss out on many on-campus events, both networking and social, which we neglect to appreciate when we are in Abu Dhabi.

Studying away, especially when done twice, is an incredible opportunity to grow. The semester(s) allow(s) you to learn new life skills, meet new people, discover new places, and learn about new topics. Yet, like all things in life, studying away is a coin with two sides.

I confess that when I was making decisions about my four-year plan, I seriously failed to consider one of the sides. I blame some of it on the timeline of the study away applications – since we go through a cycle of internal approval, NYUAD students have to make up their minds earlier than students in New York. As I discussed in my previous Study Away Chronicles piece, a part of it was also the fact that us people often fail to appreciate the things we have while we have them.

Most importantly, however, I hope this column shows the other side of studying away that you do not normally see on any of the official websites. While fully supporting anybody desiring to study away twice if they can (it is amazing!), I hope future generations make this decision more informed than my peers and I did.