Hi Anna and welcome to FT.

I've been in your position and the good news is that it IS feasible, but you will need to wrangle to make it work. Here's my quick list of places to start since you're in college:

0. Get your passport.

The first step is to get your passport, if you don't already have one. Invest in your passport now and you'll start finding excuses to use it. Otherwise, not having it will always be a barrier (more mental than anything else) to traveling.

1. Use your university as a springboard

I can't emphasize this enough. If you're at a larger university, there are plenty of ways to start traveling with their help. This is a great way to get introduced to international travel and there are three ways that you can use your university to get you there. Study abroad programs are excellent and you get credit for it too. The cost of the program is pretty marginal and financial aid can be usually be used on studying internationally. Another way is to start studying the language and then apply for scholarships that specifically assist students with doing a language focused study abroad. If you drop by the language department, you might be able to find someone who will pay you to travel abroad. The third way is to see if there are any programs or projects that have an international component. I have a friend who builds race cars for the school and travels with the car as they compete internationally. I ended up in Shanghai, thanks to a project I was involved in.

2. Prioritize travel

There's a lot of stuff that costs us money that we don't really need. A couple of years ago, I gave up my car and started taking the bus. It literally saved me thousands of dollars, which I used to buy plane tickets instead of gas. Not everyone lives in a place where this is possible, but not owning a car is a huge boost to your travel funds. In general, look at your budget, see what you're actually spending money on, and ask yourself whether you really need it or need it as frequently as you're buying it.

3. Keep an eye on FT.

The travel deal section here of FT has some killer, but short lived, deals. I flew to Japan a couple years back for $430 round trip, which was a deal that lasted about 2 hours before the price went up to $750+. Once you have a little travel fund and your passport, you're good to go. As you're in college, you should have the flexibility to take advantage of the deals and travel cheaply. The other week, there was a fare to Madrid from Seattle for less than $350.

4. On that note, travel cheaply.

I don't know what your travel preferences are, but being flexible will help you travel cheaply. If you aim to stay at a nice hotel every night you will run out of money quickly, but hostels and B&Bs can be much less expensive depending on who you're traveling with. Self-catering is just fine when you're on a budget: There's nothing wrong with bread, cheese, and some fruit from the store. You can also spend less by avoiding the touristy restaurants and eating like a local, where the locals eat. For example, while I was in Shanghai, I spent $30 on a nice meal at a decent better restaurant, but the next night's dinner was $5 including drinks total at a local place near my hotel out in the suburbs. When I was in Mongolia, I paid $7 a night for a place to stay vs. over a hundred for a regular hotel. If you do your research and feel adventurous, you can keep costs down pretty well.

5. Start playing the mileage game.

Here on FT, mileage is king and you can travel pretty far with miles. Do a little research to figure out which program will work best for you (which really is about which airline alliance flys from your home airport and goes where you want to go and then how reliably you can redeem miles), and sign up. There are ways to start boosting your account, like credit cards if your credit will allow it, which can get you towards award travel. However, the biggest thing here is not to spend money on miles. Airline credit cards cost money every year and if you're not careful you can end up spending more money than the "free" travel is worth. Some crazy people even fly just to earn the miles (*cough*I'veneverdonethat, no...*cough*).

The point is not to jump at every possible mile you can without regard to the cost. For example, if you have to spend $100 on something you don't need to earn 5,000 miles is it worth it? No. 5,000 miles is 1/5th of an award ticket to anywhere in the US, yes, but if you saved that $100, you're also 1/5th of the way to buying a $500 ticket to anywhere you want. On the other hand, if you can earn 100 miles for spending $100 for something you actually need, that's better than spending that $100 with 0 miles.

6. Get started!

This might sound simplistic, but travel is about practice. The people on FT are good at getting around the world because they have invested time in figuring out how to do it. It's logistics and you can practice it by figuring out where you want to go and start planning a trip right now. Figure out where you want to go and try to figure out how you would get yourself there. You can always ask here on FT and you'll get advice from the community, usually from someone who's been there and knows what's going on. I don't know how much experience you have traveling, but assuming that you're just starting out with zero experience pick a place that is easy (basically anywhere in Europe; Perhaps Paris?) and plan a trip. Figure out who flys there from your city, which hotel/hostel you hypothetically would stay at, how you would get from the airport to your hotel, and how you would get around the city. Figure out what sights you would want to see, how you would go from one to the other (including how long it will take), and research to figure out what days they will be open. If you feel fancy, plan a day trip to Versailles or Monet's garden and figure out which railroad goes where, and what train you would need to catch.

In practice, you don't need to have this all figured out before you buy a ticket, but it's good to practice actually building a trip that works. Good advice is to allow more time than you think you will need to get between different places and double check what days things run when planning a train or bus connection. The other piece of advice is not to over plan your stay: You need to get from A to B, but what happens at A, B or between is best experienced with a flexible attitude.

Hope this helps!