To me, spending a year abroad is exactly what it means to ‘make most of your time at university’, and since I cannot think of a reason not to go abroad, I find it pretty hard to pin down what I am most looking forward to. But I have tried to do exactly that here.

– I am looking forward to joining the young, dynamic and enthusiastic Erasmus lot, a community where ideals such as tolerance, dialogue and exchange of knowledge and ideas are not only being talked about, but lived. This is a huge privilege and a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity and I am sure it will prove to be one of the most beneficial and instructive things in my life.

– I am looking forward to change, the new and the unknown. Of course, change does not always mean change for the better, and I am not longing to leave Edinburgh because I do not like it, on the contrary. But radical change, new situations and challenges are, to me, the essence of progress and development.

– I am looking forward to becoming more self-confident, both personally and academically, to the feeling that I have taken matters into my own hands and to new viewpoints of seemingly familiar things.

– I am looking forward to studying at another institution with different teaching styles and courses, and to inspiration concerning my dissertation and postgraduate studies.

– I am looking forward to some sort of a ‘coming home’ feeling, since Grenoble and the French Alps are in many ways more similar to my home town in the Italian Alps than Edinburgh could ever be.

– I am looking forward to improving my French, I cannot wait to experience the flow you get once you’ve really got the hang of a foreign language.

– I am looking forward to finally getting to know a country which, up to now, I have only admired from a distance. A year abroad is in many ways the golden ticket to dive into a culture, and of course to day trips.

– I am looking forward to the wee daily delights, such as cheaper coffee and rent, and snowy winters.

– I am looking forward to settling in, to getting used to a new place, language, street names, faces, and to being able to show my family and friends from my other two homes around Grenoble.

– I am looking forward to living in a city which played a central role during what I think of as one of the most fascinating political movements of the 20^th century, the French Resistance.

– I am looking forward to my last year in halls.

– Most of all, I am looking forward to opening a chapter of my life that has yet to be written, a parcel with something great but unknown inside it, a present for me to unwrap. I am most looking forward to the things I am not even expecting right now.