[MikeC2558]

Hello,

Im Michael Conti. Im currently enrolled in the University of Las Vegas, Nevada.
Lately I have been distracted from my work in school. Im really beginning to
Wonder what is out there? Im interested in experiencing new cultures, eating new food and
Seeing new places and people. Im planning on going to Europe next year.

Will it help me to concentrate better through school? What should I do when I return?
Would study abroad also change my prospective even if its more time in school?

[[email protected]]

My advice for what it's worth: Don't just go to Europe to bomb around. It's expensive and you'll just end up talking to Americans. Do the sudy abroad, just use a reputable company, I'm sure your school has programs set up and whatever you do, don't use Two Worlds United.

[artdeskinc]

It is very difficult to understand other people in other countries unless you can actually live there. It is very difficult to understand even the USA, because everything in differing places is so diverse. Are you expressing the classic definition of experiencing "ennui", or something another? Something else.

There are many things out there. The problem with experiencing any of these things is that all of them take time. To quote my art companys' treasurer, "We live in an era of specialists, when what society needs is generalists". Unfortubeately, to make a living, having a specialization is what is required. You cannot hope to understanbd what the definition of being a "generalist" means, until you have enough experience to survive doing so - using either you own resources - or anothers.

If you do go to Europe only seeking new experinces and adventure - consider what might happen. You might eat well. You might have other appetities satisfied. You might come back refreshed and rested - ready to play your role in American society. Then again, you might not. Your adventure might feed your desire to assuage your own lack of entropy - ennui.

Have fun. My advice? If you do not live life - doing everything you might ever posibly have the courage and conviction (and ability) to do - then you did not live.

Phil

[pink floyd]

These quotes may be of help

1. “Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness.” - Mark Twain
2. “The world is a book and those who do not travel read only one page.” - St. Augustine
3. “There are no foreign lands. It is the traveler only who is foreign.” - Robert Louis Stevenson
4. “When preparing to travel, lay out all your clothes and all your money. Then take half the clothes and twice the money. ~Susan Heller
5. “I travel a lot; I hate having my life disrupted by routine. ~Caskie Stinnett
6. “People travel to faraway places to watch, in fascination, the kind of people they ignore at home.” - Dagobert D. Runes
7. “A journey is like marriage. The certain way to be wrong is to think you control it.” - John Steinbeck
8. “No one realizes how beautiful it is to travel until he comes home and rests his head on his old, familiar pillow.” - Lin Yutang
9. “The use of traveling is to regulate imagination by reality, and instead of thinking how things may be, to see them as they are.” - Samuel Johnson
10. “All travel has its advantages. If the passenger visits better countries, he may learn to improve his own. And if fortune carries him to worse, he may learn to enjoy it.” - Samuel Johnson
11. “For my part, I travel not to go anywhere, but to go. I travel for travel's sake. The great affair is to move.” - Robert Louis Stevenson
12. “Traveling is a brutality. It forces you to trust strangers and to lose sight of all that familiar comfort of home and friends. You are constantly off balance. Nothing is yours except the essential things - air, sleep, dreams, the sea, the sky - all things tending towards the eternal or what we imagine of it.” - Cesare Pavese
13. “One's destination is never a place, but a new way of seeing things.” - Henry Miller
14″A traveler without observation is a bird without wings.” - Moslih Eddin Saadi
15. “To awaken quite alone in a strange town is one of the pleasantest sensations in the world.” - Freya Stark
16. “Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things you didn't do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines, sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover.” - Mark Twain
17. “To travel is to discover that everyone is wrong about other countries.” - Aldous Huxley
18. “All journeys have secret destinations of which the traveler is unaware.” - Martin Buber
19. If you reject the food, ignore the customs, fear the religion and avoid the people, you might better stay home. ~James Michener
20. “Tourists don't know where they've been, travelers don't know where they're going.” - Paul Theroux