The sun is out and the flowers are blooming in Strasbourg, which can only mean one thing — it’s time to make summer plans.

For some students, that means securing internships and summer jobs back in the U.S. For others, including me, that means finding ways to travel and volunteer in Europe until the day our visas expire.

I chose to study abroad during my sophomore year partially in order to spend a few weeks of the summer exploring France before the pressures of interning and networking set in for real after junior year. Accordingly, I’ve been spending the past few weeks finding programs and volunteer opportunities to fill up the nearly two months between the end of the semester and my flight home.

One popular low-cost summer experience with abroad students is farming with World Wide Opportunities on Organic Farms. Through WWOOF, the young and restless (and broke) can exchange labor for meals and a place to stay. This labor can involve anything from building fences to selling produce at markets, and the farms can have everything from fruits and vegetables, to llamas and beehives.

For me, finding a farm to live on for part of the summer involved asking myself a lot of questions like, “what exactly is a dry toilet?” and “would I get along with a donkey?”

Ultimately, I decided to take the plunge, and recently arranged to spend about two weeks on a fruit and vegetable farm in Aquitaine with chickens, horses, a cat, a dog, a pig and some fellow travelers.

Students willing to go a little farther off the beaten path can also find opportunities outside organizations like WWOOF. For example, I Googled “volunteer opportunities in France” on a whim and five search results pages later, I found a bed and breakfast in Allier in Central France where I can stay for next to nothing in exchange for working in the garden and around the house.

And for those not completely burned out with academia by the end of the semester, many universities — both American and French — run brief summer programs abroad. These programs offer a chance to repeat a curtailed version of the study abroad experience in a new city — or even a new country.

Grabbing at alternative summer opportunities enables students to experience Europe on their own terms. Programs like Syracuse University Abroad help ease students into life in a new country, but after a semester of transitioning, the summer offers students a window of time to travel alone, explore new parts of their chosen country and maybe even learn how to clean out a chicken coop.

For me, testing my independence abroad was one major motivation to stick around in Europe after the semester ends.

Exploring during the summer is also a chance to meet new people. It can be hard to maintain relationships with French students while taking a full course load and traveling on weekends. Volunteering abroad allows you to meet people other than students and get to know the country of your choice outside the classroom context.

Making summer plans that involve everything from studying in Paris to farming in Aquitaine makes it harder than ever to focus on the end-of-semester cramming. At the same time, it can make me even more nostalgic for the comforts of home (my family, my dog, my Ford, my brand of coffee) that I won’t be able to see for an added few weeks after the semester ends.

Like college in general, studying abroad represents a small window of time when students have the independence to fend for themselves without the adult responsibilities of mortgages and real jobs. It’s not every day you get to camp out at an organic farm in France. So, until my visa expires, I’ll be making the most of it.

Maggie Cregan is a sophomore history and magazine journalism major. From Cleveland to Syracuse to Strasbourg, she enjoys rocking out and getting hopelessly lost. If you want to talk to her about this column, or are Keith Richards, reach her at mmcregan@syr.edu and follow her on Twitter at @MaggieCregan_SU.

Published on April 8, 2014 at 1:00 am

Contact Maggie: mmcregan@syr.edu