After worrying about leaving home and my friends/family, here are some of my new friends in the US

Being raised with Eastern roots, I have gotten used to a lot of things growing up. I can’t eat a full meal without rice, I can’t sleep without a bolster pillow, and I can’t imagine living without my parents. Even at the age of 21, when “leaving the nest” is normal in some cultures, in the East we still live with our families. Living under one roof is practically mandatory, even after you’ve become legal or started your career, that is until you get married.

I first came to the U.S. at the age of 5 with my mother, who was pursuing a graduate degree, and then moved back to Indonesia after she graduated. Though we lived in Indonesia for about 10 years, I experienced culture shock in my own country and longed to come back to the U.S. to pursue my education. Don’t get me wrong, I love Indonesia, but I sometimes felt out of place in my native land. I started composing a plan to move back to the U.S., beginning with majoring in English literature at the University of Indonesia. Out of the blue, my mother got a job posting in Washington, D.C. and I happily moved with my whole family to start my college education from scratch in the U.S.

But there was a catch. My mother’s work post was only for 2 years and that meant I had to stay behind to finish my Bachelor’s degree … without my family. I had never lived alone!

But in my two years living in D.C., I have learned that there are ways to survive living out of your comfort zone, and have become prepared to cope with the reality of living away from my family. I have found that being away from my home doesn’t have to mean being alone.

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“Dear Amorette, thank you for your great help all these days. I have learned a lot from this whole process. Although finally I didn’t manage to get qualified for the national competition this year in Texas, I feel happy to be with this adorable team and to learn so much.”

This Monday morning, the first one since the end of the competition season, I was writing a thank-you letter to the coach of my forensics team. It is hard to say good-bye, especially when it means leaving so many friends and fantastic experiences, and when you feel your journey hasn’t come to a final close.

Let me explain. For the past three months, I have been competing on North Dakota State University’s forensics team. Forensics teams compete in the art of public speaking and debate, and back in China it is a really popular pursuit.

NDSU Forensic Team: (from left to right) Timothy J. Bill, Dandan Chen, Eliot Tyler Olson, Keith Bistodeau, Jess Bob, Jeff Fricker, Sarah Budde, Shane Wehlage, Kristen Jewel, Nigel Haarstad and Amorette Hinderaker. (Photo by Amorette Hinderaker)

Now you may scream at me: “But you are an international student from China! And you are competing against Americans at speaking in English? Are you kidding me???”

But actually, in China almost every university has its own English forensic team and there are also lots of English debate and speech competitions. Some of them can be as marvelous as those in America. So giving speeches or debating in English is not new for me, and I adapted to the American forensics very well and grew rapidly.
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Acceptance letters (Creative commons photo by Flickr user Adrian Ho)

One thing I learned when I was applying to U.S. universities is that standing out to the admissions committee requires much more than good test scores.  The most competitive candidates will all have well beyond average SAT and TOEFL scores, outstanding recommendation letters, and thoughtful essays.  But even that won’t guarantee them a spot at their first choice school.

So what can make your application special?  I had good SAT scores, a decent TOEFL score and good grades, but I think what put my application ahead of some others is that I showed a passion.

My passion has always been for social issues – bringing people from around the world together to empower young people, and especially young women.  Everyone has a passion, and when the admissions committee can see that about you, it makes you stand out.  The trick is to demonstrate that passion in a way that admissions officers can actually see.

Here are some suggestions of how to do that from my own experience.
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I went to college in Romania, studying Psychology at the University of Bucharest. From the beginning I was involved in extracurricular activities, from the school to the national level. I didn’t even think about them as extracurricular – I just loved doing things, working with students from other disciplines, coordinating teams, organizing events and going to training sessions where professionals inspired us to dream big.

In 2006, when I first experienced American culture during a summer trip, I was impressed by an educational system based on the liberal arts principles I had always instinctively pursued. It reminded me of the Renaissance, when a person was encouraged to develop a variety of talents and when great ideas came from combining disciplines in new and exciting ways.

The value of bringing together different ideas and approaches stuck with me when I returned to Romania, and continued to define my approach when I came back to America to partake in that liberal arts education. This system has impressed me so much not only because of its idealistic educational principles but also for more pragmatic reasons: In the changing reality of the 21st century, single-mindedness and studying only one field are not sufficient to prepare ourselves for the future.

[Read more about extracurricular activities in American education]

Time and again I’ve found the value of connecting my academic pursuits to activities outside the classroom and doing those things that, although not “required,” turned out to be essential.
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We are the 99% (AP Photo/Charles Rex Arbogast)

In a college town where around a third of the population is university students, the weekend of fall break was probably not the best time to start the spark of protest in Lawrence, Kansas.

But on Saturday October 8, Occupy Lawrence , a local group of people imitating and supporting the movement in New York known as Occupy Wall Street, gathered on Lawrence’s main downtown street.

Luckily, the weather in that first weekend of October was perfect, and town residents were out enjoying what threatened to be the last summery weekend of the year. So the protest found enough success in starting the “conversation” they desired to serve as the jumping off point for more demonstrations.  And the Occupy Lawrence protests have continued driving discussion and debate among people – students and townspeople alike – since then. [See photos from the first Occupy Lawrence protest]

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My bags are packed, my final papers submitted, my apartment sublet, and as of next week I’ll be gone from George Washington University and the United States until the end of August.  It’s been a fast nine months, but I’ve officially reached the halfway point of my two-year graduate school program.

To mark reaching the end of year one, I’ve put together some superlatives for my first year at graduate school:

Biggest Adjustment:

Working on a class assignment

My first blog post last October was all about the workload difference between graduate school and undergrad.

Having to read 1,000 pages a week for class, depending on the week, was pretty miserable sometimes.  There were definitely some long nights in the library where I wanted to be anyplace else.

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Sebastian Sanchez also contributed to this video, and the cellist is Yale University student Kevin Olusola. Performances were shot at Yale and the University of Kansas, and many thanks to EducationUSA for loaning us the cameras!

For more about extracurricular activities in the U.S., read Natalia’s article comparing student activities in Ukraine and the U.S.

This story comes from our sister blog, Альма-матер (translated as Alma mater), a Russian-language version of the Student Union. Its author, Natalia Shibalkina, is from Ukraine and currently studies at George Mason University.

Natalia Shibalkina

When, at the end of the last summer, I finally got the scholarship to study at an American university, I was excited. I even didn’t know where exactly I would study, but I already imagined colorful scenes from my future life. After I found out the name of the university and its location, I was even happier, because it was very close to Washington, D.C. As it turned out, my happiness was not in vain.

Having lived here for more than eight months, I can say with confidence, that this is one of the best places to be in America. Now it’s very difficult to count all the places and events which I managed to attend. Among them are local attractions, museums, conferences, forums, volunteer projects, festivals, parades and so on and so forth. All in all, life here is in full swing!

Cheerleaders at George Mason (Creative commons photo by Flickr user J Rosenfeld)

Today, I want to share some interesting facts about how American students spend their free time. It should be noted that most students live on-campus and always have the opportunity to take part in university events. In addition, there is one more factor that influences students’ free time: it is every student’s personal schedule.

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Screen grab from the Princeton Undergraduate Women's Leadership report (Click to enlarge)

Last month, my friends and I here at Princeton were surprised and dismayed to read a report from the university’s “Steering Committee on Undergraduate Women’s Leadership” that claimed that today’s female undergraduates are taking fewer leadership roles – the first time there’s been a downward trend in female leadership since the university started admitting women.

The study found that many women work behind-the-scenes in non-elected positions for campus groups, rather than pursuing visible roles themselves, and that women do not assert themselves in class discussions even though they tend to outperform men academically.

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Our student organization logo.

At the end of last semester, I was elected president of the Organization of Asian Studies at my university.  It’s a pretty cool deal – the school gives us a lot of support to host fun events, like foreign movie nights, happy hours, and special receptions, and we also sponsor speakers to give special talks on Asia-related topics.

All George Washington University students interested in Asian studies are welcome to join, and we attract a pretty even balance of international students and Americans and graduate students and undergrads.  Two of our five executive board officers are from Asian countries (Taiwan and South Korea), and three of us are graduate students.

Since we’re about five weeks into our spring semester, and we’ve hosted or co-hosted seven events, I thought I’d share some general thoughts on what it’s been like so far.

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We’ve talked in the past about celebrating holidays from home while you’re in the U.S., but what about keeping up with hobbies from home?  Well, if your hobby is Bollywood dance, you may be in luck.

Braingainmag.com reports that Bollywood dance events have become a “US college cultural staple.” According to the article, Indian-Americans see Bollywood dance teams as a way to explore their culture, while for international students from South Asia it is a connection to home.

I was holding up Afghanistan’s flag as the photographers, teachers, and other students watched … I felt love, and respect for all of the other flags, and slowly my tears came down my cheeks.

I came to the U.S. in order to get a great education, and to make my family and my country proud. I thought coming to the U.S. and getting education was the only important thing for me. Even though my education truly was important and still is, I discovered something that now gives a meaning to my life – my passion to build friendship between different cultures, and to raise awareness of diversity in my community.

When I first came to the U.S., I found myself in a place where people were from different countries, cultures, and spoke different languages. It was a change from Afghanistan, where I lived and grew up with people of the same culture and language. I didn’t even know what it would be like to meet a person who speaks in English, so I was nervous about living with an American family and going to an American school.

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This week’s Question of the Week was about diversity on campus. As an international student, you may have a different skin color, different religion or different socio-economic background than many of the Americans you’re at school with. At the very least, you’ll probably have a different accent. How will that affect where you fit in amongst your classmates?

Here are some of your stories:

Tara Cheng:

“…it’s just way too easy to find people speaking the same language as you”

Los Angeles has a large Asian community, and the good branding of California’s schools in Asia attracts large amounts of Asian students to come to USC [the University of Southern California]. When I was working on my final papers in the library, I felt like I was back in China, because most people around me were talking in Chinese. If you go to the engineering school at USC you almost have no chance to meet American students, because that school is dominated by Chinese and Indian students. Sometimes, I am even curious if Americans at USC think of themselves as the minority on campus.

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Sometimes being far from home can mean missing out on traditions and holidays.  But some colleges make efforts to bring the traditions and holidays to you.

On i-studentlife, Ronak Jain explains the Indian celebration of Diwali and how he was pleasantly surprised to find a Diwali festival in his dorm.

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