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Home...8,600 miles away

September 20, 2008

Do you think a flight from Seattle to Orlando takes too long? Now imagine a 50-hour trip from Kathmandu, Nepal to Rollins; that is how I had to start my college life. It was strange when I realized that my beard had grown back after I had shaved two days earlier before I boarded my flight from Kathmandu.

From Pics

Many wonder why I chose to come half way across the world for a college education, the reason I would give is purely because I fell in love with Rollins the last time I had come here in February. Most probably, I would not have left home to study abroad had it not been Rollins. I still find it hard to express the joy I felt when I finally arrived at Rollins, even though I had a million little things chewing inside of me; from the weirdest of worries like how the bathroom would look like, to how I would cope trying to settle down in a completely foreign environment.

It has already been four weeks since I started life here, and I believe that I am still in a transition period. I am still adjusting to many things like left-hand-driving vehicles to the right-hand ones, the temperature scale in Celsius to Fahrenheit, having rice as a main course to having it as a side dish (or not at all!), weighing objects in pounds instead of kilograms, measuring distances in miles instead of kilometers and so on.

Amongst my many experiences here so far, I really enjoyed the Orientation Week and the Camp Alliance. We went through zip lines and went rock climbing, bowling, and even shopping which was all great fun. Now it has been three weeks since my first classes and I am starting to get the hang of it. As everything I did was a new experience for me I didn’t even realize the time passing by so quickly.

From R Journal

A view of the Kathmandu Durbar Square

I think the concept of Living and Learning Community (LLC) is one of the best. What LLC basically means is that students who are in the same courses of study like the Rollins College Conference (RCC) live together on the same floor in adjacent rooms. I think this is great because since we spend almost all of our time together, the things taught in class become clearer through combined learning. This time also helps extend our understanding of the subject matter taught in the three to four hours of lectures and discussions in class. Talking about the RCC, it is basically a class taught by multiple faculties/departments on a common issue along with the help of peer mentors (senior Rollins students who guide the new students). Poverty and Global Citizenship is the RCC I chose for this semester and Associate Professor of Political Science Dexter Boniface and Dean of the faculty Laurie Joyner are the two great professors teaching me, not to forget the two outstanding peer mentors namely Marissa Germain and John Fraser.

We get to choose from about 34 different courses at the beginning of the semester and it is a great help for students as this introductory course helps us adjust to the academic workload and teaching (and learning) styles at college.

The other thing I find great about Rollins is the close relationship the professors and the students share and also the small class size. For example, I only have three freshmen students in my Physics class with a few senior students for a class size of just 11 students. I believe this helps us build a great relationship with the professor and at the same time have a really effective and interactive class. I also find the professors at Rollins to be very accomplished and knowledgeable experts in their respective fields. Only in our first week we had professors inviting us for ice cream at their homes! Some professors even invite students from their RCC for dinner, which is awesome.

All in all, I am very glad that I chose Rollins to pursue my academic and personal goals. For international students like me the overwhelming feeling of living and studying all alone in a new country can be a major factor upon ones decision to come here. Given all my anxieties and fears about how my life would turn out, just four weeks on I can already say that my choice to come to Rollins was certainly one of the best I have made in my life so far. So, although I am 8,600 miles away from my home I still feel at home. At Rollins you are not just a number, you are a person with a unique identity equipped with all the resources and support you need to build character and to work towards a successful and fruitful life.

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