Travel is a choice to practice humility. Even traveling by air or train challenges any traveler's sense of entitlement- planes get canceled, trains get stopped, TSA takes your shampoo. This is before a traveler even reaches their destination, where language barriers, spotty internet access/service, different food or climate, etc. can challenge the traveler's patience and idea of "normal." It is so easy to respond to "turbulence" with rigidity or even anger. The images of entitled passengers yelling on planes or disrespectful tourists are pervasive. While those images are rooted in true examples of people's worst moments, I'm sure that any honest traveler has reacted in ways that they were later embarrassed by while traveling. Whether that's being rude to a gate agent, using improper manners while eating, or getting impatient with travel companions. Oddly enough, I think that the embarrassing moments- with reflection- are more informative and transformative than the moments when a traveler is perfect, patient, and polite. Those uncomfortable moments are the ones that expose where our weaknesses are- big and small. Maybe we are poor planners or over-planners- or perhaps we have unnoticed biases about certain groups of people or take more privileges for granted than we previously realized? Truths like that get exposed in travel because a new environment challenges routine and habit. Truths about our weaknesses are informative. They elucidate our boundaries, which clarifies where we need to grow. It then becomes the traveler's choice to reflect and grow- or otherwise transform. That choice exercises humility. Humility underlies the admission that the way a traveler might be used to moving through the world is not the best way or the only way. Those lessons have the potential to translate back into our "normal" lives when we return home. Learning to be more flexible with travel itineraries could translate into more ease with work schedule disruptions. Recognizing biases while abroad can challenge assumptions made about different people back home. These translations, however, are still subject to the choices that travelers choose to make after they're done traveling. To that end, I am not sure that it matters much where a traveler is going. Sure, there is value in going to a specific place to practice the language, get a particular perspective, try the food, and otherwise learn a specific history and culture. However, I think that traveling anywhere disrupts our normal, exposes our weaknesses, and gives us a choice to practice humility. Movement anywhere is a change of perspective for the individual- It is not about where we go, it is about how we choose to act on the journey. I want to study abroad because I want my weaknesses to be challenged. Though I am excited to go to London- an international city with so many cultures and perspectives to learn from- I am mostly excited about the process of studying abroad: learning- and messing up- in a place that I am unfamiliar with. There is still so much that I don't know!

"We are trapped in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied together in a single garment of destiny." There are many inspiring phrases from countless speeches that Martin Luther King Jr. was known for, and many more recognizable phrases than this line from his "Letter from Birmingham Jail." However, the definition of community from this line has stuck with me for long after the sophomore English class where I first came across it. Community service, for me, is an attempt to honor that mutuality to shape a better destiny. That same year those words found me was the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic, which, of course, was a time when our collective destiny seemed bleak. I, like many people, was still reeling from how the quarantine changed my individual life: the Zoom classes, the boredom, the sudden isolation. It felt like the world turned on its head, and, especially as a young teenager, it felt like the world was happening to me worse. And then came a unit on Civil Disobedience. It wasn't the first time I learned about the impactful and heroic actions of the movement's leaders or the evils of the Jim Crow South and disenfranchisement. But in that English class, we talked about why the same words and ideas were as powerful in the mouth of MLK as they were in Mahatma Gandhi's: we all have hardship, and we all need each other to unite through it. It seems that suffering is a permanent part of life. That's the inescapable mutuality felt in all generations across every community- not just in our times during this Pandemic. However, the existence of communities seems just as permanent. Humanity will always have dark times, but we will also always have each other. Community Service is so transcendentally important, then, because it is how we support each other through our collective suffering. Education serves to make us aware of our hardships and the suffering of others, reminding us that we are not alone. They are two sides of the same system; the more aware we are of hardship, the easier it becomes to help each other through it, and the more connected we are as a result. My sophomore English class put what I felt into perspective. Seeing how the world has always ebbed and followed through both easy and hard times made it impossible to keep festering that feeling of lonely anger. I found power in doing what I could for my community, volunteering as a low-risk person when I could, and reaching out to friends and family when they needed it. It also became easier to lean on others when I needed to, and my relationship with my friends and family deepened. My education inspired community service. Both taught me how to be a better member of my community. We empower ourselves by learning about how to empower our communities. We foster collective health and happiness when we each give what we can to each other. We can weave gorgeous garments- destinies- through educating ourselves on our collective history and acting in the best interest of our fellow man.