Sarah Schuman

I sat cross-legged on my unmade twin bed on an unusually chilly October evening in Ann Arbor, color-coded lists comparing pros and cons of study abroad destinations sprawled across the sheets in front of me. My face was streaked with sticky remnant tears and my unruly curls tied up in a messy ponytail as I added notes under each country category. Tel Aviv, “warm, party-centric, familiar, limited travel outside of the country.” Cape Town, “far, once-in-a-lifetime, slow, no European travel.” Prague, “small, central, different, historically rich.” As with most “major” decisions, this one came wrapped up in anxiety, was thought through with intense organization, and was eventually made with careful consideration and abundant outside input. My four roommates that also planned on going abroad the following semester had a far different approach to this decision. Their process, considerably simpler, was basically just thinking about a place they either had always wanted to go to and just going for it, or deciding on a location based on the type of experience they wanted to have.

I, on the other hand, started researching close to six months before I would even pack my bags. I sent friends who had studied abroad in destinations of interest detailed Facebook messages with lists of questions about housing, food, expenses, weather, travel opportunities, and culture. I called my mom and dad daily so that they could suggest pros and cons I hadn’t yet thought about. The decision, although ultimately concerning a fun, once-in-a-lifetime, adventurous experience, tore at me for those six months. Throughout the decision-making process, I lost sight of the excitement of the amazing experiences I soon would be having and the sense of adventure that inspired me to study abroad in the first place.

I am so type-A that often, I’m rushing too much to even think about considering myself type-A. I spend so much of my time anticipating things that are to come that I easily lose sight of what is happening currently. My impatience, my sense of organization, my regular anxiety, and my highly disciplined personality often come to head with those closest to me. Equally as often, I can make myself crazy.

Family vacations can be especially trying when the planner in me comes to head with the laid-back, experience-driven vacation style of the rest of my family. My Dad likes to plan travel the way I like to—having activities planned back to back, with restaurant reservation options based around our schedule of activities. I guess you could say he could have passed down some aspects of my type-A-ness. But his patience extends far further than my own. When I was in middle school, maybe 12 or so, and Joey was in 3rd or 4th grade, my family took our first-ever trip to New York City. Stepping out of the airport and into the crowded taxi line in the muggy August heat, I felt my empty stomach grumbling and dramatically draped myself over my mom’s sticky shoulder.

Dad, sensing my impatience, announced, “Let’s drop our bags off quickly at the hotel. The Guggenheim morning discount only extends to 1PM!”

Joey and my mom rolled their eyes but obligingly stuffed their bags into the too-tiny taxi trunk while I, tried to push thoughts of lunch and any time to sit and relax out of my head.

One five-minute stop at the hotel in Times Square and a sweltering ten-block walk later, we found ourselves in Central Park, just steps from the Guggenheim. But we had diverged from the original plan, to just go straight from the airport to the hotel. And at that point, I couldn’t find anything to distract myself from my grumbling stomach. Not the adorable babies being pushed in strollers through the park or the completely clear and blue sky with the sun shining. No, any reasonable thoughts were pushed away by the anticipatory, anxious planner in me as I plopped myself down Indian-style in the middle of a large patch of grass in the park. I pouted, arms crossed, eyes narrowing angrily behind my obnoxious hot pink sunglasses, until my dad literally dragged me up by my arms and convinced me to just go with the flow. My impatience can be an extreme annoyance to my friends and family, but can paradoxically motivate me in positive ways.

98% of the time, I wake up five minutes before my alarm, always, for one reason or another, Hozier’s “Cherry Wine.” I’m ready to take on the day, and feel as if I don't get done what has to get done before 2:00 pm, it won’t get done at all. Once I eat breakfast, my day officially begins, and I can get done all of what has to get done to ensure it does in fact get done. Post-4:00 is what I call my “nothing” time, when my patience has essentially completely run out and productivity is at its valley for the day. So I am a firm believer that if you have the time to get shit done early, and there aren’t last night’s dishes waiting to be put away or texts and calls to respond to, why not face the wrath of the email inbox and lecture slides so you don't have to later?

Like I said, that impatience is a double-edged sword. Admittedly, I’m a nagger. I am highly organized and motivated, almost to a fault. Getting up early and getting everything done early in the day can sometimes leave a lot of free time when I expect others to be free. In the morning, I work out, I have my healthy meals, I’m productive, I respond to my emails. When afternoon or evening rolls along, and if what needs to get done has gotten done, I’m just ready to hang.

Usually, Mom’s done with work for the day at 3:00. I first hear the thud of the garage door opening around 3:20. I stop whatever I’m doing as she plugs her phone into the charger and slides her coat off. Two minutes later, I meet her on her bed, where she is already half asleep on her healing mat, work shoes still on and the news on quietly in the background. I nuzzle up to her shoulder, I’ve been anticipating her coming home for the past few hours and now it’s time to catch up, but she has a much different idea of how to use this time. I wrap my arms around her waist and start telling her menial details about my day—what I had for lunch, that my workout class was especially crowded, that I’m planning to work on my resume that evening. “Sarah, I had a long day, can you just give me a few minutes?”

Then, I give Joey a try. He’s perched at his desk, per-usual; shoulders slumped over his phone, checking sports blogs, his homework open but not being touched. I sit on the edge of his bed and wait for him to notice. He’s been in here all day, the “man-cave.” I play one of our inside-joke songs on Spotify, and start dancing around him.

“Moooooooom!” he calls.

“My god, Sarah!” she groggily responds.

I wish every day could be a lazy Sunday at home with my family, when I am free to be “type-B” for the day. Usually, our alarms go off in sync at ungodly hours to rush out to a morning work out. On Sundays, I roll out of bed and make my way downstairs, soon enveloped by the smell of toasting bread, eggs frying and coffee brewing. Mom and Dad are still in their pajamas, cozied up on the couch reading the Sunday Times. Nola is curled up at their feet, grinning widely with her Sharky toy. We sit and read, passing the style, arts, and sports sections around assembly-line style as soon as we complete them. Our eggs are eaten leisurely, only moving to the kitchen table to continue hold newspaper pages in front of our faces, a happy silence.  After breakfast, the dishes are left in the sink and we all head to the basement to snuggle up and watch football. Actually, Joey and Dad yell at the TV while my mom and I page through magazines and snack on popcorn. I comfortably go with the flow with the encouragement of the familiar setting of my home and the people in it.  During days like these, I’m not thinking about to-do lists or future plans. I really don't care what “happens next.”

But it’s hard for me to understand that not everyone is like me. As I get older and my network continues to expand, I form more and more relationships with people who are less and less like me. Through those relationships I’ve realized even my existing relationships could be different if I took the time to understand how and why I run on a different schedule than them.

Things get stickier when I’m further out of my comfort zone. Last winter, I studied abroad in Prague, Czech Republic. At the beginning of the semester, everyone felt pressured to plan weekend travel for the entirety of the semester. That meant groups of friends who had mostly met just a week or two earlier, unfamiliar with each other’s travel-style, were planning trips to neighboring countries. Just weeks after arriving in a foreign country, knowing no one and none of the language, I was being catapulted out of my comfort zone, leaving for a weekend trip to Budapest, Hungary with two girls who I barely knew.

 I found myself on a train headed south, coffee in hand, temples still throbbing with the beat of 90s music from the club the night before. Across from me sat Abigail and Nicole, two Amherst students who I met my first night in Prague. We had our AirBnb booked, but besides that, no plans were in place for the weekend. This was in stark contrast to how I plan anything social at home. If I am anticipating going to a bar or a party with my friends a certain evening, I will mull plans over in my head all day. As soon as my friends walk in the door after they’ve finished studying for the evening, I face them with a million questions about when I should get ready and where we’re going.

Seven hours of attempts at naps and journaling later, the train pulled into the Budapest central train station. Our excitement was quickly replaced with panic as the reality of the empty train station, with the exception of a few questionable strangers, and our lack of transportation to the apartment set in. It was nearing midnight as we finally located a cab and pointed the address to the AirBnb to our cab driver, who spoke no English. After a pitch-black ride, which felt like five hours but was really only about fifteen minutes, the driver pulled up to a quiet corner. These girls hadn’t prepared for the trip much, but luckily, they had converted some money in advance, so we handed the driver a handful of Hungarian coins and approached the door to the apartment structure. Being the person that I am, I had all information for the key exchange saved to my phone. But we tried pressing every button on the keypad and turning the locks on the door every which way, and nothing worked. A feeling of absolute panic washed over me as I remembered that I had no Wi-Fi connection, and therefore could not contact anyone. By some miracle, a bicycler made his way out of the apartment building minutes later and let us in, but once we got to the specific apartment, we hit another road block: the keys didn't fit properly in the door lock, no matter how we fidgeted them. As Abigail and Nicole laughed at the ridiculousness of the situation, I took my anxiety out on the poor lock and key. Here we were, alone, freezing, and exhausted in a creepy, motel-like apartment structure in the middle of the night in a foreign country, with no way to get into a warm place to sleep. I handed Nicole the keys and began pacing back and forth. She fiddled around a bit more until we double checked the email with all of the information about the apartment and realized that we were in fact sticking the key in the wrong hole. Gail and Nicole walked into the apartment first, falling onto the bed cracking up, while I followed, shaking my head and silently cursing to myself.

We woke up the next morning and groggily made our way out of the apartment to discover the adorable city streets that had been shrouded in darkness the night before. After sleeping through breakfast, we had no plans for the day, but stumbled upon an adorable middle-eastern café on a bustling street around the corner from our apartment. As we sipped the complementary mint tea and took in the savory smells of shawarma being sliced off the pit and pita baking, I noticed how good it felt to find unplanned contentment, especially after being thrown in an unfamiliar situation with fairly unfamiliar people. While I didn't know Abigail and Nicole well yet, traveling with them challenged me to consider that living life their way wasn’t half bad. I can’t consciously stop overthinking, over-planning, and losing my shit over everything, it’s part of my DNA. I just have to keep in mind that getting there may not be easy, or perfect, but there are (hopefully) going to be more times that things just “work out” like the day we found the little café in Budapest.