Traveling to Oxford | My Journey from Highschool to Medical School

In my last post I mentioned writing two to three posts about my journey from high school to medical school, one about my internships and jobs I had before Medical School, and the other one(s) about my traveling. 

When I got rejected from Medical school the third time in a row, I was in a very upsetting mindset.

 I struggled with some personal problems, I didn't know what to do with myself, I didn't wanted to work full time again after doing it for two years on a very low salary and to be completely honest with you, as much as I loved Medicine and learning more and more, I didn't want to see any hospital soon. 

I remember sitting in my room, researching as I always did before, what to do next. Nothing was appealing to me, nothing got me excited as it did before. So I took a break. 

I worked occasionally two to three times a month in a touristic job and spend my free time reading a hell amount of books, watching great shows, spending all my time with friends and family. 

Time passed by and after one and a half months, I was sitting in my room again, thinking what to do next. 

I remember that a friend of mine decided to move to London for four months to visit an english school and we were texting each other all the time to catch up. We do study english for about eight to nine years in school, but to be honest, my english was pretty rubbish. I hated it in school because of my teacher and had a pretty bad relationship with this language in school. So after school I really wanted to improve it and a some of my friends went to other countries to stay or visited english schools. I think it was about two months before I turned 21 that I decided to follow my friends idea to go to the UK. 

At first I was thinking about where to go exactly. After a few hours, I had to decide between London, Cambridge and Oxford. I did some research, watch documentaries, and after a short time, I was sure that I wanted to go to Oxford. So I picked up a school and in the next moment I was quite devastated about how much money I needed to pay the school, pay a room and all the other costs you have when you move to an other country for a while. As I said before, I worked occasionally, and it was the first time in three years that it wasn't that easy for me to find a job. I got super excited about the idea to leave my Environment and living somewhere else by myself and I couldn't just forget the idea of Oxford.

I worked in my job, wrote a lot of applications for different jobs, but I was pretty unlucky and didn't got anything new. It was already the end of November and I wanted to go to the UK in the beginning of the new year, so I hadn't enough time. I tried to forget about Oxford and got very sad and helpless again. 

On the 23th of November when I turned 21 and was celebrating with my family at home, my parents gave me a small letter as my birthday present. It only said "You'll go to Oxford". I didn't expected that in a million years and it was the biggest surprise I'd ever had, I bursted into tears out of excitement and happiness. Thinking about it now, it just makes me smile and very happy. It was a very, very generous present, but more then that it came in the darkest period of my life and it means so much to me.

So the next day I wrote an email to the English School in Oxford which is called Oxford house College. They offered me a course with three hours lessons a day and a family to stay with. 

In January 2013 I flew for the first time by myself to the UK. My host Mother just came to the train station to pick me up. After seeing my cosy little room, we drove around in Oxford by night and I fell in love with the city.

My days consistent of english lessons from 3 pm to 6 pm, studying, reading, exploring and just relaxing. I made amazing friends straight away and we traveled to beautiful places such as London, Stratford upon avon almost every weekend. We went to traditional british pubs after school, museums and had so many dinners and a lot of Bens cookies together. 

I walked to christ church campus every single day, just enjoying the nature and the peacefulness, listening to some good music; I went to the library reading every single book my Ian McEwan I could get, who I was obsessed with and watched english shows all the time.

Oxford is my happy place for so many reasons. It was the first time I lived almost all by myself and not with my family, it was the first time where I actively tried to make friends, the first time where I cooked for myself,  I was confident in class and participating and honestly since then I realized that I could learn anything I really wanted. I solved a lot of my personal struggles and difficulties there and after months came back home as an much happier person.
Traveling is one of the most important parts of my life now and I guess it all began there back in 2013 and I know it isn't something for everybody. I was very scared to travel by myself or live by myself somewhere else, but since Oxford I traveled by myself a lot of times and although I love having company, there is something so liberating and peaceful to traveling by yourself that I think everybody should at least try it!

Happy Sunday everyone!