Life in America: UChicago International Students Talk

For Akshat Goel, college was an exciting yet slightly nerve-wracking experience. While Mumbai bustled with just as much life as any American city and many of its residents lived a similar lifestyle, Akshat was still preparing for a culture shock when he moved on campus.
 
Like Akshat, many international students face a transition that differs from the average American freshman’s. Though a great number visit America before entering college, settling down in the U.S. is an entirely different matter. In addition to being away from family, friends, and an environment they have known for years, international students need to adapt to the sights and sounds of a big American city.
 
“Going to college was itself a big change,” remembers Akshat. “But then you add on this extra layer of being in a different country with its own other culture and the change amplifies.”
 
The culture shock doesn’t lie so much with adapting to social conditions as it does with adapting to physical surroundings. While any student on campus would note the differences between school and home, for international students, the comparison is a more magnified recollection of sights and sounds. As a result, the biggest challenge isn’t fitting in. Rather, it’s keeping memories of home intact while not dwelling too much on the past.
 
“To me, the people here were just like people back in New Delhi so the social life was pretty much the same,” says second-year Shivangi Jain. “But I was homesick mostly because I kept comparing what I was seeing here to what I remembered from home. For example, when I first stepped off the plane I noticed that the air just smelled different. There’s definitely this smell of India that can’t be recreated anywhere else.”
 
But Shivangi stresses that her constant comparison of Chicago with New Delhi only indicated an adjustment period and not anything negative. In fact, she discovered quickly that her new surroundings opened her eyes to new perspectives, as it also did for Turkish student, Ilknur Aliyev.
 
While Turkey is also a fairly multicultural country, Ilknur was delighted by the melting pot of ethnicities and cultures he saw the moment he set foot on campus. “There’s a group for everyone here,” he explains. “The entire student population is so diverse, ethnically and socially. It’s not that Turkish society is homogenous, but there’s just a lot more variety of people here.”
 
And with that observation, Ilknur says, came a new perception on cultural identity.
 
“I think what intrigues me most about America is that [from what I see anyway] anyone can be American. In other countries, if you are Chinese people will see you as Chinese. If you are Arab then people will see you as Arab…But here, it feels like anyone can be American even if you or your family wasn’t originally from here.”
 
It’s this sense of acceptance that eventually allowed Akshat, Shivangi, and Ilknur to settle down. Since then, school has been a breeze.
 
“I came back after winter break and I just felt like a different person,” says Akshat. “I realized that no one saw me as too foreign to fit in, so it was really up to me to bridge the gap.”