Three.

In May of last year I had heard that when you are a senior at my school you can do an internship abroad for class credit. I was so glad to hear this news. I was hopeful that I would finally get to London and that everything would work out.

Soon I made an appointment to talk with the person in charge of the internships abroad. I knew what I wanted to do. It seemed simple enough: I wanted to do an internship in some sort of hospitality or travel/tourism related job in London. When I visited, I laid out what I wanted to do and why. 

Needless to say, I was extremely disappointed when they basically told me, "Sorry, we can't help you." They went on to explain that what I wanted to do was extremely hard because they had little to no resources over in the UK to get me an internship. He said that I could, of course, pursue my own internship and try to find something myself but then essentially shot that down by saying how extremely hard it is to find an internship in the UK and even more difficult to get a visa. This was last May, and he said he wasn't sure that doing something a year from now would even be enough time.

It was incredibly difficult to sit there and hear someone basically shut down your last chance at your dream. It was even more difficult to walk out to my Mom and trying to explain to her how it wasn't going to happen without bursting into tears. Of course once I got out into the car only then I burst into tears. I was so upset. London was my dream that I had been working toward for 3 years, and I kept trying and being shot down. I felt that I had no options left, and my dream of London would have to be just that - a dream. I would have to learn to let it go and try to focus on other things.

Several months later a friend of mine was talking about looking at grad school's to attend after graduation. She was living in Paris at the time, and one of her options for school's was in London. My dream of London was very much still in my mind and I had still wanted it. After researching the option of getting a job in the UK after graduation (while still residing in the US) or the possibility of being transferred to London through a employer, both of which are extremely difficult to do (though not impossible, I've seen it done but it is very hard to accomplish), I had quite literally exhausted all of my options.

So when a friend brought up grad school, that planted the idea in my head. I wasn't sure about it, though. Did I really want to spend another year in school? Normally someone else would look into all of their options and try to find a better or easier way, but I had already done that in the past. Every option has been looked into and exhausted; this was the only option I had left.

I started researching schools, just to see if there were schools that even offered what I wanted to major in. I was pleasantly surprised when I found out that there were more schools than I thought that offered travel and tourism related degrees.

After months of research on everything from housing to location of schools to money and costs, I've decided on a school and am almost done applying. A year ago I don't think I could have imagined myself here, seriously considering grad school. Living in London for over a year. It's something that is so much better than what I had previously planned for myself.

It's so surreal that this is something I'm actually pursuing. I've worked toward this for almost 5 years and I hope that it really, truly happens for me.