Being an international student can feel pretty tough sometimes, whether that means paying three times the price of what domestic students pay for tuition, or barely being able to speak to family back home due to the time difference. It’s safe to say I have my moments of weakness where I debate if it’s all worth it.
Don’t get me wrong though, I love going to school abroad. I get to live a whole new life, venture out into unfamiliar territory, and indulge in a completely different culture. If I were to make a pros and cons list (my favorite pastime), the pros would definitely outweigh the cons.
But the past few months have definitely taken me for quite the ride. Because, what do you do when you’re an international student who isn’t so international anymore? With COVID-19 restrictions forcing international students to stay put wherever they are, many of us are pretty far from school, and trust me when I say far. I study in Toronto, Canada — roughly 11,000 miles from my home in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, where I currently am. There’s an eight-hour time difference, and well, while I don’t know much, one thing I can say for certain is that going to class definitely isn’t going to be the same anymore. As the COVID-19 pandemic has thrown schooling off course, and universities switch to online classes, it’s time to adapt to the new normal as we all navigate this whole new reality.
When things got bad and my parents decided it was time for me to come home, everything was a mess. I had to pack up my entire apartment in Toronto in under 48 hours, and find some place to store what was practically my life, in boxes. And then after all of that, I had to catch a 14-hour flight back home in a plane filled with paranoid people (myself included), wiping down their seats and too afraid to touch anything, hoping we would make it back into the country before the borders closed. (We did. We were the last flight to make it in.) After my whole traveling fiasco (and let me tell you, a fiasco it was), because it was mid-semester I still had to attend classes online. And what were once 6:00 – 9:00 p.m. night classes in Toronto, were now 2:00 – 5:00 a.m. classes in Dubai.
While all of it seemed like a grueling adversity for a few weeks, it was soon summertime and all my woes, at least those in relation to school, were now over. But with the announcement that my fall semester was going online, my parents and I came to the conclusion that the best course of action for me would be to stay home. There would be no point in catching a flight, only to sit in my apartment all alone and attend classes online.
Although there’s no doubt moving classes online was the right thing to do, it’s also still valid and justified for me to feel a sense of loss, sadness and anxiety. It’s difficult to uproot your routine and try to come up with another one while being far away from classes, normalcy and, not to mention, in the midst of a global pandemic.
Usually when I come home for the holidays, for the first few days, I stay up all night and sleep all day because of the jet lag. I’m starting to think that the next couple of months will be like my first few days on holiday, only never-ending.
As I do my best to find the silver lining in all things that are happening as a result of the pandemic, it’s pretty tough to adjust to this new normal. I guess what I’m trying to say is that if you’re an international student, like me, who may have a million worries, tons of emotions and a sense of loss, you’re not alone and your feelings are valid. It’s okay to feel all the things you do, but it’s also important to adapt and adjust. The sooner you are able to find a new routine and figure out what works best for you, the less daunting and anxiety-inducing it’ll be.