Despite being a broke grad student, I’ve managed to travel quite a bit!

When I first decided I was going to go to graduate school, I knew that I didn’t want to spend any money on it really. I refused to take out any loans, as, if you’re familiar with the American education system, a lot of students who aren’t from higher income households have to take out loans in order to afford going to school at all. As an undergraduate, I had taken out loans in order to pay for my education, and although mine were much less than other people’s my age and situation, I knew that I couldn’t go further into debt for graduate school.

So I went to a graduate program where I could afford the tuition upfront each semester and lived at home. Although I had the added benefit of living with my parents, it certainly was still tight when it came to money because I had to pay almost $6,000 a semester when it came to tuition. Despite all of this, though, I found ways and scholarships to keep traveling, as I knew that if I constantly stayed at home, I would go insane with all of the research I was doing.

Here are some of my tips from this time!

There are many different scholarships to study abroad.

I could never afford to study abroad, and would have never had the opportunities I had if I did not receive scholarships for it. While I know universities typically have their own scholarships and offices to go to if you want funding, I received scholarships from the US State Department. When I finished high school, I received a fully funded scholarship to go study Korean in Seoul, South Korea, and had the incredible chance to attend Ewha Womans University there and live with a host family.

Then, a year later, I received another scholarship to go to Iowa and attend a Summer Institute at the International Writing Program. This, too, was a fully funded experience. My experience in Iowa inspired me to start studying Indic languages, so I then applied to a federal Critical Language Scholarship. I would’ve gone to Kolkata, India, but the COVID-19 pandemic squashed it and I was then given a virtual program.

My point is: do your research. Taiwan has the Huayu Scholarship, and I know the Indonesian government has another scholarship to study and live there. The world is full of funded opportunities if you know where to start looking.

Conferences are a great chance to use for travel funding.

I’ve only been to one conference during my time as a graduate student, and it was the AWP Conference in Seattle. I would have never gone to Seattle if it wasn’t for this conference, but because I was asked to be on a panel about creativity in programs that didn’t implement creative writing throughout the institution, I thought this was a good chance to get funding from my school.

Now, I go to a school that isn’t known for its research (yet), so there aren’t a ton of opportunities for funding and conference travel if you’re a graduate student. My entire trip to Seattle wasn’t covered by the two stipends I had received from my university, but thankfully it had covered my portion of the Air BnB I had booked and the flights I had made to Seattle from Baltimore. That said, I still had to pay for my food and transportation.

Conferences are such a good opportunity to travel if your school is willing to fund them. I think that if there were any more conferences I’m interested in during the future, as a PhD student who has more funding, I would definitely take the chance to use school funding to present and see a little bit of the world at the same time.

Local trips are trips, too!

Something my family grew up doing, because we didn’t have a ton of money when I was a child, was drive to local destinations. We’ve continued this as I am an adult, seeking out local spots that we would have no idea existed if we weren’t pending some time looking at what was available in our area. When you go with a group of friends from school or family members, you can also split the gas when it comes to transportation, or what I do when someone else drives is that I buy the food for the day.

I think the best part about local trips is that it leaves you with more love for the place that you’re in. I didn’t used to love my hometown and what was around it, and moved to New York City for college. Because of that, I ended up coming home, opening my eyes, and it feels like an entirely new world out there. So next time you’re out, try to practice some mindfulness and find the beauty in things that you previously thought were mundane!

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