I Left Kellogg for a Month and the World Didn’t End (Argentina Edition)

By: Shade Bullock, Co-Editor-in-Chief

When I first decided to study abroad, I was… not convinced.

I worried I was about to miss the Kellogg experience—the classes I’m paying an unholy amount of money for, the social scene, the “you had to be there” moments that make business school feel like business school. I worried about leaving my husband and our dog (our child), Bernard, for an entire month. Yes, Cam and I had already spent a year apart thanks to multiple Middle East deployments (shoutout to the U.S. Army), so in theory, a month shouldn’t have felt dramatic. In practice? Still felt long.

But the thing I worried about most was drifting from the friends I’d finally started to feel close to. Second-year students only get one more quarter of this weird, wonderful phase before everyone disperses across the globe, and I know firsthand how hard long-distance friendships can be. It felt like I was voluntarily giving up this unique time when I can literally walk next door to a friend’s apartment.

Still, with my husband’s encouragement, I realized I kind of owed it to myself.

I’ve always wanted to learn Spanish but never “had the time,” which is adult code for I didn’t prioritize being uncomfortable. I also always wanted to study abroad in undergrad, but as an ROTC scholarship recipient, that was a ‘no,’ unless Cadet Command approved it. Otherwise, I’d fall behind in military requirements and delay commissioning. And while I’ve technically traveled a lot through the military, it’s not exactly the Instagram version. I was always in uniform, on base, and very much not living a normal life in the countries I was stationed in. Argentina felt like a chance to finally experience a place as a human—not on an assignment.

Here’s the plot twist: almost all my fears were wrong.

Somewhere between struggling through Spanish and navigating daily life abroad, I reconnected with a version of myself I didn’t realize I missed—the pre-Kellogg, pre-Army version. The one who tried things without worrying about being impressive. The biggest lesson? It is absolutely okay to be bad at something. Turns out, I’m bad at Spanish. Painfully bad. I was judged while ordering coffee and almost certainly bullied (silently) by middle-school girls on my flights. But learning wasn’t for them. It wasn’t for LinkedIn. It was for me. And because I wasn’t too shy or too cool to try, I’m leaving with better Spanish and a lot more confidence than I arrived with.

Author (left) and her roommate hiking Patagonia

Being abroad also reminded me how small the Kellogg bubble actually is. Don’t get me wrong, I love Kellogg. But some space away from the Global Hub is refreshing. The people who mattered stayed in touch. I felt exactly zero FOMO scrolling past Big Sky trips and party photos. They looked fun, sure, but in ten years, I won’t remember a random night out in downtown Chicago. I will remember hiking Patagonia with my roommate, Sheril, with zero hiking gear (an objectively terrible decision; just buy the expensive boots).

I also learned that you can’t have it all, but you can choose what you’re okay compromising on. I knew the academics abroad wouldn’t match Kellogg’s rigor. And that was fine. What I gained instead was immersion—language, culture, and a deeper understanding of Latin America’s financial environment. I built relationships with founders and students from Argentina, Germany, Peru, Barcelona, and beyond. My LinkedIn now looks wildly different—in the best way. Sometimes the experience and the network outweigh the syllabus.

Finally, this trip reminded me how much we all have in common, even when our resumes say otherwise.

When I arrived at Kellogg, I struggled to relate. Many of my classmates came from consulting or corporate backgrounds, lived in major cities, and spoke a business language I didn’t yet understand. I came from the military, where “abroad” usually meant a base, a uniform, and not much glamour. I felt behind. I didn’t even know what “MBB” stood for until my third week of business school (still humbling, still funny). Imposter syndrome is a work in progress.

But traveling together has a way of cutting straight through the surface-level stuff. Our small cohort moved quickly past job titles and into real conversations. Being in an unfamiliar environment bonds people fast (as we all well know from KWEST). It reminded me of something I’d missed from the military: connection through shared discomfort. And somewhere along the way, I got my confidence back, not because I suddenly knew more, but because I remembered we’re all just people underneath the degrees.

Studying abroad didn’t pull me away from Kellogg. It gave me perspective on who I am outside of it.

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