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When it comes to travel and study abroad, sometimes you have the choice of planning the trip by yourself, or following a predetermined program. Which do you prefer, and why?
For personal travel and vacations I have never had someone else plan my trips because I like to do it myself and control what I do, where I go, etc. However, for study abroad experiences, I was very happy to go with an organized program. Having only lived and studied in the US, I am not familiar with foreign university systems and how they work. I believe planning a study abroad trip without a program would be much more difficult…especially in terms of getting enrolled at the foreign university, getting course credit accepted, and visas. Also, when you are studying abroad, it is nice to have the program support system, orientation, staff and directors, and the comfort of knowing you are not alone. The only negatives I see is that these programs are made for American students and most programs you do you are with a large group of Americans, which can very easily put you in a bubble and prevent you from meeting locals, speaking the language, etc. Also, they tend to have many rules and sometimes it feels like you cannot be fully independent because of all the structure.
While planning an independent trip abroad, I like an agency to do the primary event planning. My tendency to penny-pinch with housing and transportation leaves some planning on my behalf, so I must ensure the quality of my paid venues (because honestly, who wants to pay for an unsafe dump?). However, my free time remains flexible in regards of planned or unplanned.
I took two trips in different zones of Europe: the first more open in schedule, the second planned to a T. My first study trip granted me pre-planned, three-star housing and safe transportation (my two legs) around the city. Without the stress of planning all summer to study in the winter, I was thankful the university had it under control (not to mention the community of other local students!). My second trip, a touristy/survey package deal, included various housing, dinners, and bus and ferry transport. Because the tour followed a travel-and-sleep pattern (you never stay in the same place twice), and I planned it at the last minute, I was grateful all the details were already covered.
The European trips I’ve taken involve safety waivers with school/agency and copious free time, so none were 100% self-planned. I was not granted that freedom, but I’m not much of a planner anyways. Thankfully, studying with a university affiliate saved hundreds of dollars on housing and gave me peace of mind. Having a great, comfortable time is worth the extra money.
**If you plan housing, whether by yourself or with an agent, please make sure you read plenty of reviews from TripAdvisor/Google about its location and functionality. The sites could guide you to comfortable places in town, or to a dingy hostel two miles from the train station!
For family vacations in the past, I would tell my parents exactly what I wanted to do. I would decide which theme park I wanted to visit, whether or not we should go to the beach and if we should do fun things like parasailing or swimming with dolphins. However, that’s usually where my planning stopped. My parents would do all the heavy work like booking the flights, choosing what day to do each activity and choosing where do do things like parasailing and swimming with dolphins. That was also the case with my study abroad. When my friends and I went on weekend trips, I would sit back and let them choose the transportation and lodging and I would just tell them whether I was okay with it or not.
I prefer planning trips myself, or independently with my travel buddies. However, I think “half-and-half” is pretty good.
For example, when I went to China last summer, I was technically in a program, though it was very open due to the focus being cultural studies. We were free to do whatever we wanted outside of class and scheduled activities. On our last few days, we took two day trips. A teacher helped us with one of them, and unbeknownst to us, the friend he had help us hired a tour guide who we really didn’t need…
Despite that, the day after we went somewhere else and had an acquaintance from school show us around. He pretty much navigated us, though, and took our input on where we wanted to go.
The latter case is ideal for me alongside completely independently scheduled trips, but checking out agencies isn’t too bad, since sometimes you can get a good deal!
I definitely prefer to plan trips on my own. Sometimes when you are with an organized group or our you are limited with what you can do and how much time you can spend at rac attraction. I prefer to have the freedom to do what I would like to do and have no restrictions on time and locations. Although it may be frustrating and chaotic at times planning your own trips, it’s much more rewarding in my opinion. When I was younger I wa sa student ambassador on a trip to Europe and I found it very frustrating at times when I was not able to do what I wanted to do. It was nice having transportation and tours organized, however that showed me how much I prefer to plan my own trips.
