I was a stressed-out, type-A college student. My study abroad experience in Argentina helped me become less anxious.

• Growing up, I was always stressed, overworked, and described as type-A; it got worse in college.
• When I studied abroad in Argentina for a semester, I learned there is a different way of living. 
• The laidback culture of Argentina helped me destress.

From my early days as an elementary school student, I've always associated striving with success. As a child, my self-worth was closely tied to how much I could accomplish and how busy I was. If I wasn't doing something productive, I felt useless.

I retained that belief through high school until I had an eye-opening experience while studying abroad in college.

My identity came from what I could produce

Throughout high school and college, I was a typical overachiever — high honor roll, above 4.0 GPA and involved in every extracurricular I could pack into my schedule.

If my time wasn't punctuated by a never-ending to-do list, I felt like I was wasting my days.

While pursuing a double major in undergrad at a small liberal arts college in Ohio, I was given an incredible opportunity to study abroad in Buenos Aires, Argentina. As a low-income, first-generation college student from West Virginia, this felt like an unparalleled opportunity to see the world.

I thought I'd spend six months improving my Spanish and exploring South America, but I never expected the experience would be a catalyst for changing the way I think about education and my identity.

In Argentina, 'busy culture' doesn't exist

In the US, many of us are conditioned to stay busy from an early age. For better or for worse, this need to hustle is stitched into the fabric of our culture. Since I'd barely traveled abroad before I moved to Argentina, this American hegemony was all I knew.

In Argentina, though, this "busy culture" is pretty much nonexistent.

This was one of the first things I noticed when I enrolled in classes at two local universities in Buenos Aires.

Back in the US, my conversations with peers were typically focused on how busy we were. We'd dedicate walks to class and dinner conversations discussing all the homework we had to finish before the end of the evening, and that was normal to us.

However, in Argentina, nobody seemed to wear busyness like a badge of honor. In fact, if I talked too much about what I had to do, my new friends started to worry.

"But what are you doing for fun?" they'd ask, and a lot of times, I genuinely had no answer.

In the moments when there was a lull in the conversation, I started to reflect on why I always felt the need to be busy and the effect it was having on my mental health. I began to loosen my grip on some of those thoughts while studying in Argentina.

Time and punctuality are relative

While studying in Argentina, another area where I became less anxious and stressed had to do with time and how I managed it.

As a type-A student with a bursting schedule, my college days were dictated by my paper planner and Google calendar. I cultivated one obligation after another as if I were conducting some bizarre overachiever's symphony.

I'd easily become annoyed if something happened to throw off my schedule, and I had little tolerance for life to be unpredictable.

In Argentina, however, I learned that time and punctuality are relative. During my months in Buenos Aires, almost nothing happened when it was scheduled to occur. Buses ran late, business hours felt like suggestions, and friends never arrived for coffee dates when they said they would.

At first, this lack of punctuality and reliability was irritating. There was no way for me to plan when everything around me was so unpredictable. I was often frustrated because I felt like I had no control over my circumstances.

In life, we often feel as if we're in control of our circumstances. However, we're really quite powerless when it comes to situations beyond ourselves.

No matter how much I wanted my professor to arrive on time or for the bus to come when it said it would, there was literally nothing I could do about it.

While studying in Buenos Aires, I learned there was no use in stressing about these things. I started to understand boundaries and what it truly means to accept the things I cannot change.

Argentina showed me a different way of living

No matter where you call home, life is full of stressors. However, one of the most rewarding aspects of traveling is it shows us how different communities deal with everyday inconveniences and troubles.

As a student in Buenos Aires, I learned I didn't have to tackle my problems with an American perspective. Instead of running myself to the point of exhaustion and dying on every hill, I had the power to let things go.

Not everything was my battle, and I stopped fighting them like they were. I'm still giving myself grace to step into the rhythms of this new mindset, but I began to lean into it during my time in Argentina.