Internationals Find a Home Abroad

Riding on the airplane flight from South Africa for his freshman year, Nicholas J. J. Kogl ’13 says he did not know what to expect. He wasn’t sure his style would fit into Harvard’s undergraduate community considering what he had read online and seen in the movies.

“I didn’t know how they would take the smoking,” he says. “I have nine piercings and I dyed my hair black.”

Kogl, the only male South African in his class, says he did not know of a campus community to which he could relate.

“I didn’t know how accepting of me people would be.” He says he thought, “I’m going to be an outcast.”

Today, Kogl is on the social board of the Woodbridge Society of International Students, where students can recall the common fears many of them faced journeying to Cambridge.

An entire community of Harvard students—695 undergraduates or approximately 10 percent of the student body—arrive from abroad to study at the College.

For these students, there are the usual adjustments to the new social environment. But many create their own community on campus with other international students who understand what it means to come with significant cultural differences.

A COMMON EXPERIENCE

For many of the incoming international students, the Freshman International Program—a three-day pre-orientation workshop sponsored by the Woodbridge Society—is their first experience on campus.

The information taught in FIP regarding documentation and how to adjust to a different school system will follow international students throughout their college careers. Already, most of them have passed through the lengthy process of securing a visa, been required to demonstrate sufficient motive to go back to their country of origin, and secured a sufficient amount of money to pay for the college they plan to attend.

But for many, the relationships formed during this period with fellow international students provide the lasting impression on students.

“It all starts with FIP,” says Nina C. Buchmann ’13 from Germany.

Buchmann, a member of the Woodbridge Outreach Committee, says that FIP establishes a community even before the entire freshman class arrives on campus.

According to Dominik Nieszporowski ’12, president of Woodbridge, the organization is concerned that FIP limits international students’ interaction with their non-participating peers.

“It might be more of an issue for FIP than other pre-orientation programs,” he says.

Buchmann says that international students are drawn together because of their shared experience arriving in the new environment.

“One of the reasons we stick together is because we have such different experiences than Americans,” she says.

Buchmann’s experience is particularly unique because her entire blocking group includes only international students.

“We didn’t realize what had happened until our House Master pointed it out to us,” she says.

“If internationals have something in common it’s that we’re not American so we want to learn about each other,” says Mahum Shabir ’11 from India.

Because of their common experiences and traditions, Americans share a popular culture of music, sports and other social aspects, says Shabir.

Among international students, “you don’t assume anything about each other,” she says. “You start off with a clean slate.”

Lacking that common ground, says Shabir, international students bond over learning about each others’ cultures.

“My closest buddies are all internationals. It wasn’t a conscious effort—it just happened,” says Omer Aftab ’11 from Pakistan.

BRANCHING OUT

Nieszporowski says, however, that he hopes to expose internationals students to the broader community earlier.

He says that Woodbridge will plan mixers “for the future” between FIP participants and other pre-orientation programs on campus.

Woodbridge is not reserved only for international students, says Nieszporowski, noting that the Society has a similar numbers of Americans and international members.

International students often bring their American friends, who are welcomed to join, to events hosted by Woodbridge, he says.

“I feel most internationals reach out to Americans,” he says.

The organization is trying to build a similar cross-cultural environment with FIP.

“We try to reach out to Americans as FIPpers, and we always have group leaders who are Americans,” he says.

Kogl says he skipped FIP because he wanted to reach out to Americans as he acclimated to the new culture.

“I had no support structure, so I didn’t want to lean so much on internationals,” he says. “So I needed to get associated with Americans.”

But at Woodbridge, to which he was introduced by friends, he too has gravitated to the international community on campus.

He says those students “provide international perspective that bursts the Harvard bubble at times.”

In the upcoming break, Woodbridge hopes that a virtual community for the international students abroad can serve the larger student body.

This January, says Nieszporowski, Woodbridge will provide an online map indicating where in the world its members will be residing. The tool, traditionally updated only during the summer, will offer traveling members and Americans alike an opportunity to meet up and find housing with Woodbridge members around the world.

“We have friends all over the world,” says Tsering L. Sherpa ’11 from Nepal. “We get free housing to go to those countries.”

POST COLLEGE CONNECTIONS

While international students like Kogl often arrive on campus with few student connections, they leave with a guaranteed support network.

Nieszporowski says that the criterion for membership in Woodbridge’s alumni network is registering for the e-mail listserv.

The organization draws members back to campus to lead information sessions, and has created its own medical school application guide. For students like Kogl, the Woodbridge support is an improvement from the days when he was applying to Harvard with the Common Application.

“I didn’t know what a GPA was,” he says. “I just circled it.”

For many of the Woodbridge students, the connections formed in college outlast graduation because they end up working in a common location, here in the States.

Woodbridge provides workshops for these students, informing them of Optional Practical Training in which students can stay in the U.S. for 12 months working in a field directly related to the students’ area of study.

“It’s hard to tell my mom and best friend that I might end up working here,” says Buchmann.

—Staff writer Nathalie R. Miraval can be reached at nmiraval@college.harvard.edu.