Travel Anxiety: Like Father, Like Daughter

By Sammi Davis

My parents are without a doubt my number one fans. They have championed me through rough patches and stood with me to celebrate my accomplishments. It was no surprise to me when they hooted and hollered over the phone when I told them I had been accepted into the London Review study abroad program.

However, my dad’s excitement developed into worry over the following weeks. His baby girl was going halfway across the globe with people he hadn’t met, and therefore couldn’t trust. I’d be an ocean away in a foreign country with limited cell service to assure him I wasn’t lying in a ditch. What I was seeing as a once in a lifetime experience, my dad could only picture as ‘Taken’ starring Liam Neesan. He for sure thought I would end up kidnapped or murdered.

Luckily, my mom and I were able to soothe his mind with certain measures put in place. 1) I bought a fanny pack to carry my phone, keys, wallet, and other essentials rather than putting them in my pocket. There isn’t a single photo of me in London without that sucker on. I knew that if I lost it, my father would never let me travel alone again. 2) He splurged and got the unlimited data plan from Sprint so he could text me overseas. I told him the hotel and most restaurants would have Wi-Fi and that if I was being held hostage, my kidnapper probably wouldn’t let me use my phone to call him anyway. He didn’t like that last part. 3) I promised to be careful. Yes, I am careful all the time, but I understood my dad’s concerns with traveling out of the country.

My worries surrounding the trip weren’t in regards to being kidnapped or in danger like my father was picturing. My biggest fear lied in the actual travel portion. I had never flown out of the MCI airport, never traveled internationally, never traveled without my parents, never flown over an ocean, and never been in a plane longer than 2 and a half hours. In my mind, with so many new elements of traveling something was bound to go wrong. To make a long story short, all of the traveling went swimmingly thanks to my wonderful classmates who I flew with and the Google search engine which provided answers to all of my 12am overthinking concerns.

In all, both my father and I had unsettled nerves for no reason. Yes, I realize this is a whole article about worrying about something that didn’t happen, but folks, that is how my brain works. Lots of anxiety and nervousness for nothing to ever happen. And if you think I was bad, my dad had it worse. He always has my phone location as a safety measure, but my mom told me he checked it like crazy all the time I was away. He actually screen-shotted my location and sent it to me twice. The first picture was to confirm that my location was the hotel that I would be staying at. The second was when I traveled to Bath for the day, and my dad thought my phone had been stolen since it was outside of London.