Hello everyone! My name is Hannah Rowedder and I am a junior at the University of Iowa studying Marketing & Business Analytics with a certificate in Leadership studies. I am from a small town in Iowa called Carroll. I am so beyond excited to be heading to the CIMBA campus and experiencing Italy for 12 weeks.
I have known from a young age that I have wanted to study abroad and travel the world. I have always been interested in different cultures and societies and knew that traveling was going to be a big part of my life. Coming to Iowa and seeing all the different opportunities just made me all the more excited. Ultimately, I knew I had 3 criteria for what program I was going to choose.
- I wanted to live on my own not a host family. I value my independence and I don’t want to go back to living under another person’s rules. So that left me with getting an apartment somewhere or dorms/campus living. I decided I would most like campus living as living in the dorms for me was a lot of fun and I made lots of friends.
- I wanted to be able to travel. As I have said traveling is very important to me and CIMBA having 26 travel days was something that was a huge seller to me.
- I wanted to go somewhere that would transfer credits easily back home. The process for CIMBA couldn’t be any smoother.
Despite waiting years to be able to go abroad, I definitely had my doubts and concerns. I love Iowa City and feel homesick for it just going home for Christmas break, but I know that it won’t be my forever home and you have to get out and explore at some point. Around one month before my flight out I had strong feelings of not wanting to go anymore and feeling as though I was going to miss out on things on campus and not getting to see my friends that have become my family every day in class and at home. Feelings of doubt and concern are 100% normal. I just had to remember the excitement of wanting to go and all my doubts faded. I have put on a brave face and I am so happy I did.
I have a slightly different start to my CIMBA story than most of my peers as I decided to take 2 weeks before school starts to travel throughout Ireland, Scotland, and England. It has felt like a movie. Since I am heading to Europe for the first time, I knew that I wanted to see as many places as possible. There is never going to be another time in my life where I don’t have too many responsibilities to be able to uproot my life and see the world. Even though I have been doing such fun and exciting things, I am more than ready to get to the CIMBA campus and eat A LOT of pizza and pasta.
Hannah