I sent the Spring of 2018 studying abroad in Gold Coast, Australia as if by chance. I transferred to HPU in the fall of 2017 as a Junior, and didn’t have the intention to study abroad in my time at HPU for a few reasons. The first being that pretty much all of the classes I had left were requirements toward my major and so I had little flexibility in terms of taking classes abroad. Any class that I took would be an upper division course that would probably demand a hefty time commitment. The second reason is that I had been travelling quite a bit on my own and had even recently studied abroad in Bali for another college. I thought it would be financially wiser to stay put for a while. As it is, these two things are what I feel stops a good amount of people from studying abroad - either a fear that studying abroad won’t fit in with their schedules or that it is just too expensive and unfeasible.
The truth is that so long as you have an open mind, it is more likely than not that there is somewhere you will be able to go that offers the classes you need, even if like me, you have no electives or gen-eds left to give you flexibility. After all, America isn't the only place where you can study in English if this is your issue. I would suggest that you look at the programs for any and all of the partner universities HPU has and I’m sure somewhere will have what you need. If you think that this is a daunting task and you couldn't possibly have time to do this, well… I did it in a matter of a few days. In fact I just out of curiosity walked into the study abroad office one day and then decided to study abroad. It just so happened that this was about a week from most of the application deadlines for the Spring… and the university I ended up applying to… which was also the only one who offered classes that could substitute my major requirements was just a few day away at this point. So I believe in you. Speaking of transferring classes, I guess it depends on your department chair, but you don't have to take the exact same class abroad that you would have to take at HPU. It just has to be comparable, and there is a decent but of wiggle room here.
If you already have mastery of a second language this is even less of an issue. In the case of anyone who still has electives and gen-eds, the language of instruction doesn’t really matter you’ll learn faster than you think (I went to school in Germany for a year, trust me). If you do have electives to spare my only question to you is “What the heck are you doing here still?” If your answer is that you can't afford it… well you're probably wrong.
If you have survived living in Hawaii… well the world isn't as expensive as you think. Granted the cost of living is quite varied across the globe, but no one said you have to choose an expensive country (unless like me, your only option ends up being an expensive country). In fact, Australia is famously expensive, and while there were some unavoidable costs, I managed to live there for 6 months for less on average then Hawaii. This takes into account additional trips I took from there to Malaysia and Singapore.
The point is that you can study abroad if you want to. You can make it work if you want to. And you really should make it work, even if you're not a hundred percent sure or if the only countries available to you are not your first or even second choices. Honestly I had no particular interest in Australia before I studied abroad there. I went because it was the only option for me and that was good enough for me. I am very happy I did and I reckon you will be too.
