Stuck between home and here
There’s so much pressure on the first issue. I have great ideas for future editions, sure, but none seemed fit for the inauguration. I’ve promised both information and empathy, and I plan on delivering both.
But on this maiden voyage, I want to focus on a feeling that defines the international student experience, a feeling that took me a while to understand: being stuck between worlds.
I felt like an outsider after moving to New York from Romania. That much is obvious. The shock, however, was in realizing I was not only an outsider among Americans, I was also now an outsider in my own hometown.
The first time I went back home was for winter break. Being back felt somehow familiar and strange at the same time, like I’d traveled to a parallel universe.
My family was SO happy to have me back, and I was SO happy to be back. But! It was also… weird.
I guess when I left, I basically expected their lives to come to a stop: they’d wait for me to come back, while I went away and built an entirely new life for myself. That obviously couldn’t happen, so I came back home to find they now had inside jokes I was not a part of.
During that break I met up with an old friend who had also moved away for college, somewhere in the United Kingdom. Manchester, I think. I always forget.
Anyway, we talked about our new lives: how exciting the adventure was, how hard it was to adapt, how very few people back home really understood our choice. Our new lives had little in common. I had moved to a big city, while he moved to a small town. I went to a liberal arts school,the U.K. system is a stuffy one-track road where you only study one subject forever and ever. Our new lives couldn’t have been more different.
Yet, we had more in common with each other than we did with anyone else: we were both living outside of both our native and adopted worlds. And it would take time before we’d feel at home in either.
Back then it felt like a bad thing. I felt lonely. Now, six years after that moment, I don’t anymore. I think being an outsider (not taking the common path) allows you to think for yourself. Make your own choices. Make a life that is entirely your own. I love that. Societal constraints do not apply to you. You’re the courageous adventurer who moved across the globe. You can do anything.
Now if only you could sponsor yourself for a visa, am I right? HA. Yeah. Times are hard.
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Next week’s edition will feature a visa sponsorship success story.
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Stay safe, wear masks and I’ll talk to ya soon.
Love,
Ana