The Rocky Road to Vienna

As a privileged teenager who never questioned whether I would go to college, I always knew studying abroad would be a crucial component. I dreamed of going to Paris, and even mentioned it in my application to Lawrence University, which I now attend. But in my French class freshman year, I found out about Lawrence’s study abroad program in Dakar, Senegal. It was happening in Spring Term of 2025, my sophomore year, which aligned perfectly with my plans. I was planning on doing a French minor, and I was already in the required level of French to complete before the program. So I got all the documents together and submitted my application to Senegal.

A week or so after I submitted, I got an email from the advisor for the trip saying she wanted to talk about my trans identity. I had written about being trans on my application in the section about anticipating challenges, saying I knew it would be tricky but I would make it through by staying closeted. “We’ve had trans and nonbinary students study in Senegal before,” she said when we met. “But they’ve all gone by their birth gender while they were there. What I’m worried about is if you hide your trans identity and it gets found out, you could be kicked out of your host family and thrown in jail.” Well then.

She asked whether I would be comfortable with detransitioning for a few months and living as a girl, something I hadn’t done since middle school. I told her I was on hormones and getting top surgery soon, and I wasn’t willing to throw my gender out the window just for the sake of broadening my cultural horizons. She understood, and I withdrew my application. I felt annoyed and disheartened — growing up in the Bay Area, I had never had such a clear-cut experience of my identity limiting my life choices before. I knew in theory that other countries hated people like me, but I never imagined it would actually affect my life.

Later in my freshman year, I declared a double major in music and creative writing. I had started taking classical voice lessons in college around the same time I started hormones, and was now taking music very seriously. I still wanted to study abroad, but I didn’t want to miss being in the opera, which severely limited my options. I had a meeting with a study abroad advisor where I asked about my options for going abroad in the spring. She told me I was limited to only a handful of programs, due to Lawrence’s trimester schedule.

I also had a meeting with my beloved English advisor where I told her I was on the fence about studying abroad. “My one regret from college is not taking the chance to study abroad,” she said, studying me over her glasses. “It’s up to you, but I really think you should go.” Hearing that from someone I trusted was the last push I needed to find a way, no matter what.

My solution came in the form of another Lawrence-run program called the London Centre, which was one of the few programs I could attend in the spring. It was entirely Lawrence students, same as the Senegal program. At the end of my sophomore year, me and my girlfriend both decided to apply to go. Our applications were accepted, and we excitedly started planning our trip abroad.

In the fall, we had a horrible breakup. Just kidding! We went to our pre-departure meeting. I thought it was a bit strange that I didn’t know anyone else who was going, but I never could have expected the reality of our group. The room was full of about twenty jocks, all wearing Lawrence merch, guffawing and clapping each other on the back. Hockey boys. I quickly checked the door to make sure we had the right room. We did. I looked around the room and counted three girls — two of them soccer players, one our student body president. Everyone else was a male athlete. Great.

Throughout the two-hour meeting, the jocks did not so much as acknowledge me or my girlfriend. We played a game, and none of them even tried talking to us. I couldn’t even look at my girlfriend, because I knew what she was going to say. As soon as the meeting was over and we walked across the green, she said it: “I don’t think we should go.”

I tried to convince her that it would be okay, we just needed to give it a chance, that we could ignore the jocks and hang out by ourselves. But as I broke the news to my friends one by one, they all said the same thing: Don’t go. The more I thought about it, I realized they were right. If I could barely tolerate those insufferable jerks for two hours, how would I survive two and a half months? So I dropped out. Again. I was starting to get seriously annoyed. Why was it so hard to find a program that would let me be queer and not make me want to punch someone? 

I met with the study abroad office again, and discussed my options. This time I knew I was interested in either a French immersion program or a music program. There was a music program in the fall in Vienna that sounded cool, but if I wanted to do it, I would have to miss out on the opera in my senior year. 

That being said, I was running out of time. If I didn’t want to miss my very last term at Lawrence, I would have to go abroad in the fall. I thought back to what my advisor said and my unsatisfying experience in opera my junior year. I thought about getting out of the Lawrence bubble and meeting other musicians outside of the 300 or so whose faces I see almost every day. When I thought about it like that, it wasn’t a hard decision at all. I submitted my application, got accepted, and put my deposit down. I was going to Vienna.

And that brings me to the present, where I am just a week out from leaving for Austria! I am very excited to experience a new country, culture, and language. Sometimes things don’t work out how you expect, but I am sure this experience will be every bit as wonderful as Senegal or London would have been in my ideal world. Third time’s the charm, right?