In just a few days, I’m going to embark on one of the most exciting adventures of my life— studying in Paris for four months! I can’t believe how insanely lucky and blessed I am to have the opportunity to do this. This is something that I have been dreaming of since I was around 10 years old, believe it or not. As I finally, just recently, started to tell people that I was going to study abroad I got tons of support, love and excitement but also a LOT of questions like “Why do you want to do this?”, “Won’t you miss New York and your family?”, “How will you get credit?” or “And your parents are okay with this?”; so I thought I’d write a little bit about what led to the adventure that is to come.

Let’s backtrack to when this dream came to fruition. One of my older cousins, who is one the coolest people I know, actually studied abroad in Egypt when I was just about 10 years old. Now if there’s one thing I remember from then, is that I thought it was the coolest thing in the history of everything and knew I absolutely, positively had to do it myself when I went to college. That dream never left me— that dream of traveling to unknown places and meeting different people, that dream of seeing places that I read about in stories and that dream of being in a foreign but beautiful land to learn. All of high school when I would sit down with my dad to discuss my plans for college, there wasn’t a moment that study abroad wasn’t a part of the plan, even though I didn’t know exactly where I wanted to go. I wasn’t planning on letting this dream go.

I came to Pace in September of 2017 and one of the first friends I made was a sophomore at the time who was on my Bollywood fusion dance team with me. She told me that that following Spring, she was going abroad to London and I got so excited. My dear friend, Priyanka, started her own travel Instagram blog (It’s super cool, you guys should check it out— @wherespri !) and I watched in awe and pride to see my friend living the dream. When she came back, she helped me a ton to start my own process to study abroad. I truly believe that having the support of friends and family will give you all the strength you need to chase your dreams. So just a big shout out to all my people.

After a long process of research, applications and frustrations, I was lucky enough to get into the Pace Exchange Program with the Paris School of Business. I’ll be taking classes that will count as credits toward my major while being in the city of lights and fashion capital of the WORLD! I was literally bouncing off the walls when I got into the program— literal dream come true moment straight out of a Disney movie. Being a Pakistani girl, a lot of people asked me if my parents were okay with this and I will tell you right now, they were so amazingly supportive. Of course, they’re nervous and they tell me how much they’ll miss me but they never stopped me from doing anything I wanted to and always enable me to do what wanted to, too. I definitely shout out my parents a lot but they deserve it so HUGE shout out to them for being there for me.

I know that I’ve talked a lot about dreams just now but having them keeps me going. I’ve had some dreams that didn’t come true and while that was always hard, thinking of the next possibility was like a glimpse of hope when something went wrong. I truly believe everything happens for a reason. I hope you all have a dream and don’t stop chasing it even if people tell you no. It may be hard to believe, but there were some who weren’t as warm to the idea of me studying abroad. After many obstacles and dreaming of this for so long, it’s almost hard to believe that it’s actually happening in a few days. While it’s super nerve-wracking, I’m ready to go to Paris and I hope you all will follow me through this adventure.

I can’t say that I won’t miss my beautiful city of Manhattan, my Long Island sunsets, my friends and family, dancing with my team and being at Pace but I know this is the right move for me. The chance to be in such a cultured city, for such a long time and explore to my heart’s content is so enchanting. How often does someone get the chance to be abroad for a long period of time and explore Europe? Soon I’ll have a career and life won’t make it as easy to do this. By studying abroad, I will experience a brand-new country with incredible new outlooks, customs and activities. I won’t even be bound to just France— you best believe I’ll be all over Europe any chance I get. I’m super excited for this four-month journey and to share it all with you! That being said, subscribe below to not miss a thing! Make sure you confirm your subscription through a confirmation email. As always, much love to you all.

-TRR