Conversations with InterNational Students

Written by Leigh Chamberlain

A phone call to home the other day led to a much greater conversation than just the regular “how are you doing?” “They told me that they spent a huge amount of money to support me living and studying here. I did the calculation — just the tuition, it’s half a million,” says Lou.

“I matured way faster here than kids in China,” says Lou, “I learned about my responsibilities and consequences to my actions early on here — that is not something people teach their kids in China. Parenting here in the U.S. is a more hands-off approach, it’s more hands-on in China. This teaching method really helped me to grow.”

Lou makes it a point to FaceTime his parents and generally stay connected to his home through the community he has found. “I have a lot of Chinese friends over here, and I do speak to American friends when there’s stuff that international students or American born Chinese students wouldn’t understand.”

Orson Lou is a third-year student studying professional photography at Penn State. He grew up in China and moved to the U.S. in 2017 for high school. There, in a small town in Maryland, he noticed the difference between him and his peers. “Not everyone might have traveled around the world, especially not to China, so sometimes they wouldn’t be as accepting.” If there was ever a time that Lou felt pressure to acclimate, it was then, as a 16-year-old kid, who was navigating the world thousands of miles away from home.

Lou chose Penn State for college because of the opportunities that came with such a big school. Outside of academics, Penn State has also granted Lou with personal growth, formative connections and a sense of independence that he feels would not have been gained if he never left China.

A busy social life is a key component of Lou’s positive experience as an international student, which the Chinese Undergraduate Student Association plays a major role in. This association, in which Orson is now the director of the media department, puts on two events each year that provides international students with a celebration that feels like home.

Whether it is through these events, dinner parties with friends or his calls back home, Lou continues to find the balance of being far from home, while capitalizing on his experiences in his new one.

Gigi Fitiany

Penn State is known for its ability to provide a sense of home to its community. The infamous “We Are” culture has the allure of an unbreakable bond between students, a work-hard-play-hard atmosphere and something of a … high school musical movie, according to Gigi Fitiany.

Coming to Penn State from the Middle East and growing up in Palestine, Fitiany tells all her friends from home,

“If you come to Penn State, it feels like High School Musical.” She explains that through the football games, the tailgates and the beer, “it was the perfect thing for me, a new exposure to a brand new side of life. I got the college experience.”

A fourth-year studying IST, Fitiany reflected on her first few years in the states, saying,

“The

There are certainly struggles that come with being an international student, whether it’s the questions about her accent or overhearing the many “I miss home” comments from her peers, when their “home” is only an hour away.

“The distance is hard, the time difference is like eight hours, so sometimes it’s really hard to find a time to speak with my mom — gossip with her and stuff.”

A lot of back and forth comes with being an international student, like the phone tag with family or the flights to and from home, but Fitiany finds stability within herself. She made it a point to stay confident in who she is and where she is from, no matter how strange it was to text on Snapchat rather than iMessage.

Something that Fitiany wanted to publicize to students who are from the U.S. is that asking questions is a good thing.

Cristina Mock

Cristina Mock, a fifth-year studying architecture, also noticed a specific relationship with the questions people ask her as an international student from Panama City, Panama.

“As an international student, you are the odd one out. Some people either have a lot of questions or no questions at all.”

Mock has gone through a lot of different experiences being so far from home. She told the story of an interaction she had at the beginning of this semester on the bus.

“Someone was making fun of the way I look, saying, ‘What is she wearing,’” says Mock. “Sometimes I speak up, but when you do it’s hard because they just apologize really quick and leave or keep poking fun of you in your face.”

Mock’s sense of style is one of the ways she remains connected to home.

“In Panama, what you wear says something about you,” explains Mock. “Here, I saw people dressing in hoodies and leggings.” home, you leave everything behind.”

These stylistic differences between cultures were initially challenging for Mock, but she learned to embrace her home culture with confidence through clothes and makeup.

On the outside, you may see Mock wearing bright colors with a smile on her face, but that is not to say she does not deal with complicated feelings regarding living halfway around the world from home.

This journey of self-sufficiency and adjusting is no small feat, yet through it all, the reason why Mock chose Penn State in the first place continues to ring true.

“I was looking for a school in the U.S., as it is very corrupt back home. I heard from a friend that Penn State looked safe, that it looked and felt like home.”

Written by Sara Harkins

Growing up in Suffolk, Long Island, Jacqueline had no shortage of community. Between a two minute walk or a 20 minute drive, her family was in close proximity, their roots running tight. Both her parents have large families, so Jacqueline has endless amounts of cousins.

“I think there's now 30 of us — I don't know. It just keeps getting bigger and bigger … everybody just thinks that reproducing is the best,” she laughs with amusement in her eyes.

As a child, Jacqueline expressed that same mirth she has now — she was vibrant; buzzing around, her aura humming with energy.

From there, it became a normal occurrence — a death almost every year. Despite not every death making sense, each time she moved forward, until one time she couldn’t.

Holes in the Floor of Heaven

During those years, her father was traveling a lot. He was the Vice President of Turner Construction, but to Jacqueline, he was everything. When her brother was 12 and she was 13, her mom sat them down in her father’s car and told them the news she had been hiding for so many years: “Daddy has cancer.” Jacqueline remembers the sounds of silence and sniffling. When did this happen? Her father had melanoma — the deadliest form of skin cancer — since she was in first grade. Is he going to be ok? “I don’t know,” says her mom.

Suddenly, those “business trips” he took lost their innocence after she learned they were for treatment. At first, Jacqueline was upset at the withheld information, but she quickly realized the circumstances.

But in loving life so fiercely, she would also experience the ferocious depth of grief.

It’s Beginning to Hurt

In her home’s brand new office, Jacqueline sat facing the window, looking out to her long driveway. She vividly recalls the details of this memory: Her mom sitting her down in the third grade, telling her that her favorite second grade teacher has passed away from brain cancer.

By the time she was told the news, her father’s cancer had reached stage 4, but her family was adamant not to treat him any differently. On her last family vacation, they traveled to St. Thomas in the Virgin Islands. Her father had a cane and cancer up the length of his arm. Throughout the trip, she remembers her dad picking up his arm constantly, as if it was asleep. Even still, she laughs recalling how he moved the iguanas with his cane to get a better view. “If you knew my dad, it was just so on brand,” Jacqueline beams.

Her family moved forward, one small solution at a time. They built a ramp throughout the house, and his work sent a driver when he couldn't drive anymore. Even when he couldn’t travel, he encouraged Jacqueline to go. He worked until he couldn’t, relentlessly.

The following year, her grandfather passed away from Parkinson's disease. He used to sit in a padded, beige rocking chair — his chair. That year, Jacqueline had to watch that chair transform into a hospital bed.

“I didn’t really understand that loss,” says Jacqueline. For a lot of the kids, that was the first death in the family. At the funeral, she remembers hearing her little cousins yell, “Nice throw!” because instead of placing the roses into the hole of the earth where her grandfather would soon lie, they chucked them, effectively starting a new tradition.

One day, something in her gut was telling her to go home. Jacquline doesn’t fake anything — and yet, that day she lied to get out of school. She came home to hear her father shuffling, not picking up his feet. It turns out that her father was in the worst pain of his life and he was going to a hospice care facility. Jacqueline was the last person to see her dad at the house.

“We're going to get through it — you're going to be fine. I love you.” Those were her words as she watched the person who made the house feel like home, leave.

The majority of her eighth grade year was spent in the hospice care facility. School to hospice. Softball to hospice.

By the time she was in fifth grade, her other grandpa had passed from a brain bleed following a bad fall. But, even amidst the sorrow, it served as a turning point for Jacqueline, who got to meet a lot of her extended family.

“I kind of started to almost appreciate funerals because everybody is coming in … we have people coming from all over — from Canada and Ireland — coming in to say hello and pay their respects."

No one but her neighbor and family knew about her father. Assuming he would get better, she and her brother made a pact not to tell anyone. By July third, he fell into a vegetative state and never woke up.

That night, she said her goodbyes to her dad, and slept on his side of her parent’s bed. She dreamt of her father, and her father’s death.

Piece by Piece

Jacqueline loved therapy. After a year of treatment, she had a much better handle on her stress and anxiety.

The next day, on the Fourth of July, her uncle ushered their car onto the highway. She remembers watching pops of color glitter over the treetops from every angle. Fireworks and stars breaking up the night sky with glimpses of light, like opening holes into the floor of heaven.

Ripping Apart the Sky

“The hardest thing I’ve ever had to see in my life was not his body in the casket, but laying there in the hospice bed.” One thousand people came to her father’s wake. Just like that, her world was ripped from her, gravity uprooted.

She would spend the rest of her life hearing, “I’m sorry for your loss,” “be strong” and “I know what it’s like to feel your loss” from people unsure of how to console her. She would grapple with the knowledge that her father, and everyone else she lost, will become her private memory.

At the end of high school, she got involved with the “Natural Helpers” club — a club that anonymously selected students to go on a retreat and help other struggling students. There, she met an advisor named Josephine, whose story paralleled hers. To this day, Jacqueline considers her “a big sister.”

“One day, I was having a really bad day in school. I just didn’t want to be there anymore. I was like, ‘what’s the point, everyone is gone?’” She called Josephine, who suggested she come talk to her where she was working, at the Tri CYA. The Tri CYA is a Tri Community and Youth Agency. Jacqueline describes it as “building the community up … specifically, for kids who are at risk of drug use, alcohol use, gangs, failing school or have dropout risk.” It also serves as a place for parents who need extra help looking out for their kids and obtaining other resources.

As soon as Jaqueline walked in, kids came running up to her. “They're like, ‘Can we braid your hair?’” she laughs. She mostly worked with the girls, which ranged from talking about feminine hygiene to discussing boy drama and crushes.

Mourning was not sequential. She was emotionally dominated by a tornado of anger, confusion and acceptance — why did this happen, where does that leave her now and what will she do next? Even after her father passed, loss continued to haunt her.

Her aunt, her cousin and her family friend’s mother all lost their lives. A month before her father’s death, her grandma passed, too. Shaking her head, she says, “High school was a blur, I can't tell you anything that happened.”

Jacqueline quit her beloved softball, and she began verbally sparring with her mom, both of them dealing with grief and pain. “I didn't realize how hard it must have been for [my mom] until I actually just spoke it out loud. I couldn't imagine having to take care of everyone through those moments.” Everyone was picking up the pieces left behind.

After she went to college, she continued to volunteer with them for about two years. “It was just a really fun time … they really made me who I am today, and I became more confident.” Between her beloved second grade teacher and the Tri CYA, her experiences led her to becoming a secondary education major in English with a minor in rehabilitation human services.

Jacqueline hopes to use her degree to become a juvenile counselor, working with young kids in juvie.

She went quiet at that time — cutting a lot of people off in anger while dealing with anxiety and depression. “It’s just an anxious tick I now do” she says, picking at her skin and old nail polish while recounting her first panic attack. Her mother went to the grocery store, didn’t return for two hours and wasn’t returning her phone call. “Immediately, my head just went: ‘She died. She got hit by a car and she died. And she's probably stranded on the road.’” When her mother returned, Jacqueline was on the floor hysterically crying, unable to breathe. “My mom was like, ‘I think you need to go to therapy now.’ I was like, ‘I think I do, too.’”

Like Jacqueline, her dad had a strong sense of community and never forgot where he came from. “I think that’s something that I got from him,” Jacqueline muses. “I work with kids who are at risk. I want to give back the same way he did. I’m his little legacy — me and my brother are.”

Tossing Roses to the Wind

Jacqueline tries to take life day by day, but after so much loss, it feels more like hour by hour.

“Everyone was always walking on eggshells around us for years. Some of my family won't talk about my dad — there’s a whole part of my him that I don’t know,” she says, continuing, “A lot of people shut down because they don’t want to talk about the dead, but I think the beauty is getting to know them the way you didn’t get to meet them."

But she affirms that, “Grief never goes away, but you learn how to make room for more grief or better things to come … I'm going to grieve for the rest of my life — I'm constantly grieving, but you have to keep going.”

She has learned to cope with her reality and finds that with every loss, comes a gain. New members are added to her family, and sometimes they mirror those lost. Her little cousin, Liam John, is named after her father. “There's a little boy running around with my dad's name. That just makes me so happy.” She appreciates the path she’s on, and acknowledges that she could have gone down another.

When asked about a time that she feels most at peace, Jacqueline replies, “The Fourth of July is my favorite day of the year.” On that day, her family throws a big celebration, and everyone comes together to celebrate and discuss what they’ve lost and gained. She learned to love the day that she most wished had never happened.

Instead, she views her life as one where she’s living for 11 people, living fully for every life that has passed.

There’s beauty in death, too. Although it can feel separating, it has allowed her to form close bonds with others, without hiding herself or her story.

And suddenly, you’re thrust into a vision of her at a funeral with her brother and cousins, throwing roses down into the hole of the earth. There she is — pitching her hand forward, and letting go.

Written by Alyssa Opris

Penn State is many things according to many different people. Outsiders like to kindly refer to PSU as a cult. Where did that stereotype come from? Did it come from our devoted student section found in Beaver Stadium? Is it the way that the “We Are” chant is overwhelmingly loud and can be heard in airplanes, at weddings, in Los Angeles bars, reaching even the depths of Tokyo?

This widespread sense of community traces back to the people and their conversations overheard on the streets of State College. The beauty of this small town is that there are so many different characters. From a frat brother to an earthy, self-proclaimed witch, PSU truly has it all. All of these people have conversations, and whether most know it or not, word spreads around when hot gossip is overheard on the “Bloop” after a crazy night at Champ’s.

By the time what you said to your friend outside of Monte Carlo’s reaches the other side of campus, the story could have taken an entirely new form. Here are a few documented sentences overheard in State College, accompanied by a fake story for your pleasure and imagination.

White Building Gym.

Jack’s ex-girlfriend just broke up with him because he was emotionally unavailable. It’s bulking season, which means going to the gym five days a week and getting revenge on his ex. A villain arc makes Jack the cold, “love is stupid and so are girls,” type of person — that is, until he meets the next proclaimed love of his life. He thought Ella was the one, even though they dated for two months. You’ll get her next time, Jack.

Enter Luke — a second-year student who just moved into his first apartment. The first week of fall semester, he went to an apartment party and met James. They hit it off, *wink wink,* but Luke ended up falling for James more than James fell for Luke. At this point, they’ve had a situationship for a month, and Luke will take what he can get. James hinted at a “friends with benefits” kind of thing, to which Luke agreed. As long as he can be with James in any capacity, he will take it. Yes, his heart will inevitably break. Yes, he will one day realize he deserves to be treated better than an option. Just give Luke the time to learn that himself.

Overheard inside Roots.

Halley is a first-year student who comes from a small town in Virginia who just had her first kiss at a party in August. By November, she met Mac, a brother of a “very cool” frat. They start snapping, and he hits her with the “Come over” text at 2 a.m. Obviously, she goes to said “very cool” frat and only one week later finds herself at UHS because it burns when she pees. She freaks out and takes an STD test, as advised by her close friends. It’s not chlamydia, but a UTI. Phew. Halley tells her best friend while they eat their weekly Roots bowl.

Isabella and Eve met on Facebook. They chatted for a few days before deciding to become roommates for their first year. They both thought it was a simple, perfect match. After talking for hours over text and FaceTime, the girls were certain they would be best friends. They got put into Pollock, *cue sad noise.* First week in, at 2 a.m., Eve brought a guy over without telling Isabella. Eve assumed her roommate was asleep, and she assumed incorrectly. Safe to say — Isabella was traumatized. They never became best friends.

“Looking at that picture just gave me the ick.” — Overheard on the CATA bus.

Hook-up culture is for everyone else but her, Madeline decides. It’s a Sunday, and the hangxiety has hit. Madeline and her friends are taking the CATA bus to go downtown and use this opportunity for a weekend recap. Madeline has been talking to this guy for far too long, and she wonders to herself why she still keeps up the charade. Her one friend asks to see a picture of him, the famed boy himself, and shamefully, she shows her — only to have everyone laugh. While her poor boy didn’t do anything, his mere existence being perceived by her friends was enough to conjure an ick. “Maybe this is my sign to call it off,” she thinks, exasperated.

Emma and Regan are the most hated in their friend group. They think everyone else in their friend group needs to chill out because they believe they are unproblematic. They want to have fun and go out, and at this point, Emma and Regan are so done with petty drama that they will do whatever they want. Why should they sacrifice their fun? They may come to regret this when more drama happens on their outing, but that’s a cycle that will never break in this friend group.

Overheard

Joey has trouble keeping a girl. Awkward hookups, unrequited love, failed talking stages — you name it. He met a girl on Tinder and decided to go on a date. She was beautiful, and Joey — who didn’t trust women after so many frivolous attempts of dating — was intimidated. After the first date, he ghosted her, naturally. His best friend Harry loves to poke at his fumbles. On their way to CHEM 110 lab, he decided to kindly remind Joey that he may never get the girl.

When John applied to Penn State as an intended finance major, he felt like the next CEO of J.P. Morgan. He loves his capitalistic ventures and ambitions, thank you very much. He is now a second-year student and a regular attender of the Business Building. FIN 301 is telling him that maybe he should consider changing his major. Finance bros are overrated, anyways. Maybe he will switch into marketing or supply chain management. Maybe he shouldn’t have expected that it would be easy to become the new best thing on Wall Street, in the first place. Not without nepotism, and money, of course.