At some point in your college career, the opportunity may arise for you to be able to study abroad. Studying abroad is a truly valuable and life-changing experience for students of all majors.

About 80 percent of students in the United States end up changing their major at least once, according to the National Center for Education Statistics. I am one of them! Yes, me, the girl who decided she was going to be an Elementary Education teacher when she was 16.

When I was accepted into the MFA program at the University of South Carolina, I was living in Florida, working as a copywriter, and applying to MFA programs because, in part, I felt stuck in Florida. I’d finished my MA and in that time had written my first novel and a good chunk of the stories that would become my first collection, God in Neon. I was tapped into the Orlando literary community and all of its wonderful events, but I still felt like I could be doing more. An MFA program—a chance to spend a couple years working on my writing, working on another novel—seemed like the best option.