When I was in elementary school, I was no stranger to nightmares. Though many of them featured outlandish scenes of giant spiders, one particular nightmare haunted me with its unsettling realism.
The dream always surfaced before school field trips, playing out my worst fear in vivid detail. I’d sleep through my alarm, wake up with only minutes to spare, and rush to get ready for school—only to realize that I’d just missed the bus.
Every time this nightmare struck, I’d jolt awake in a panic, convinced for a split second that my worst fear had finally come true. But my panic subsided as soon as I saw the soft glow of my alarm clock reflecting an early hour of the morning.
At the time, it felt alarmingly real but, in hindsight, it was just a childish fear—one that felt completely improbable and comically fictional.
For nearly fifteen years, this nightmare remained fictional—until this past weekend.
I have been told that there is a moment in every single study abroad student’s experience where plans are completely derailed or something goes unexpectedly awry. I just never imagined that my derailment would be as severe as missing a flight.
To Dublin.
On St. Patrick’s Day weekend.
I jolted awake on Friday morning in a state of panic that I hadn’t experienced since fifth grade. Only this time, seeing “4:30 a.m.” on my phone screen wasn’t comforting. Unless I miraculously found a way to teleport to Luton Airport, there was no chance I was making my flight. The nightmare I once believed to be outlandish came true.
As I grappled with the cold, hard truth, I realized that dwelling in my frustration and shock wasn’t going to change anything.
I could blame my flatmates for screaming in the halls until 1 a.m. or curse my alarm for being too quiet, but none of that would fix the situation I now found myself in. I was the only one who could take responsibility for the situation. And I was forced to make a choice.
I could blame myself for not taking extra precautions and have a miserably pitiful weekend in my London dorm room. Or, instead, I could snap into problem-solving mode and find a way to make it to Dublin.
I flung open my laptop and pulled up Skyscanner, frantically setting the filters to show all flights departing from the UK to Dublin that afternoon. Unsurprisingly, every single flight out of London was nearly five times what I’d paid for my original ticket.
With no time to sit and ponder, I made the split-second decision to try and save my bank account by ruling out flights from London altogether.
Scrolling through the list of flights in front of me, I spotted one that wouldn’t require me to break the bank— it was out of Liverpool, nearly halfway across England.
I easily could’ve accepted that fate simply didn’t want me to make it to Dublin, but, for some reason unbeknownst to me at the time, a surge of determination coursed through me. Instead of calling it quits, I braced myself for what would be the longest travel day of my life.
I hurriedly booked the only cheap train ticket from London to Liverpool that day—one that left Victoria Station at 6:00 a.m.—and set off into the early morning darkness with nothing more than a backpack.
Rushing to the tube station across the road, I boarded the District line and anxiously watched the time tick closer and closer to 6 a.m. I surprisingly made it to Victoria Station with 10 minutes to spare, and I settled into my seat in an empty train car.
Until I saw the English countryside sprawling open beside me, I did not realize the length of the journey I was about to take. For the next ten hours, my only companions were my copy of Sylvia Plath’s The Bell Jar and my overflowing library of Spotify playlists.
By the time I arrived at John Lennon Airport in Liverpool (which required me to take the tube, a train, and a bus), I’d torn through my book and exhausted all my favorite albums. And I was only halfway there.
The next few hours of waiting, flying,and eventually shuttling to the hotel gave me an unexpected opportunity to appreciate all that being abroad has allowed me to experience. Just a year ago, I’d never flown by myself before. And now, though the circumstances weren’t ideal, I’d managed to navigate the tube, a train, a plane, and two buses in the span of a day. This instance was the first time my problem-solving skills were truly put to the test abroad. It is safe to say that the Makayla from a year ago would have been terrified to do what I’d just done alone.
You’re going to make mistakes. Maybe you won’t miss a flight and have to journey across the entire English countryside to get a new one, but something is bound to go off course. When it does, you can’t rewind time and fix it—all you can control is how you react. In that pivotal moment, you’ll finally see just how far you’ve come.
The scrapped plans, last-minute solutions, and lengthy journeys shape you in ways that trouble-free travel never will.
While I can now say with confidence that setting an extra alarm is always worth it, being forced to find a way forward from my mistakes unexpectedly helped me uncover a resilience I never knew existed. Sometimes it means taking a detour to truly appreciate abroad in all of its beautiful and flawed moments.
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