The Cultural Twist
Photo of Nandini Narula Bajpai
Nandini Narula Bajpai '25
Only being able to go home once a year, the saddest statement I’ve ever made is that “I forgot going home is an option.” Many of my international friends agree.
Diversity wasn’t a filter I considered when choosing my college until the end of my freshman year of college, when the majority of my international student friends graduated. Further, hearing that a close friend from Brazil decided not to come back as he felt he wasn’t fitting in made me doubt my own choice of going to Marist, a regional college where there were approximately 160 international undergraduates from a population of more than 6000 undergraduate students overall.
Living in our own bubble, I trust that global connectivity should not just be on an economic and political basis — as conventionally practiced — but the economic divide and cultural diversity should foster growth and enable people to be less self-indulgent. When I was transitioning to the U.S. for college, I thought microaggression was an exaggerated concept. The number of times I have been asked how I know English or if we have malls in India or if I own an elephant or if I live in a castle, is obnoxiously high. As I transitioned into my sophomore year, I felt the hole; the cultural, lingual and social gap between me, the white and the black.
Noticing the similarities that underscore the culture of the majority at Marist lowers my self-esteem socially, but I see it elevate as soon as I talk to friends or family back home. I always feel that I have something to prove to stand out from the constancy that surrounds me. I’m sometimes discouraged by the lack of ‘familiarity’ in culture and language. The most perplexing aspect is that this is not a matter of discrimination, one-upping or marginalizing the minority, it’s about situational extrovertedness. I found myself looking back to my Marist common read, Uncomfortable Conversations with a Black Man by Emmanuel Acho and I suddenly resonated with the subtlety of these exclusionary comments.
Attaining from my exposure to a growth-oriented environment at Marist, it's not that I haven’t participated. I am currently a Resident Assistant, am a board member on the Marist Model United Nations club, have represented Marist in the National Model UN Conference in New York City, have been published as a researcher at Celebration of Undergraduate Research Scholarship and Creative Activity (CURSCA), have held an elected position in the Student Government Association and have even contributed as a campus ambassador and tour guide. On the contrary, just the other day, I faked a phone call to leave a social event with s’mores and karaoke that was supposed to bond all Resident Assistants as a team. I was never the person who wouldn’t want to participate in an ice-breaker, but here I am, sitting in my room writing this because I felt very out of place.
I asked my international friends at Marist three questions to gauge how they felt about being an international student on campus:
Tell me an instance, as an international student, where you have felt out of place at Marist?
Mention any possible generalizations that have been made about you on the basis of your cultural identity.
Mention possible explanations to these subtle micro-aggressions, in the context of Marist.
The responses were perplexing. As the only person of color on the Marist Ski team, my friend from China expressed, “There are certain situations where I feel excluded due to the fact that I did not grow up in America.” My Italian friend from Hong Kong shared comments like, “You’re from Hong Kong but you’re white?” He further mentioned, “I've also had a lot of people exclaim, 'Oh I love Japan!'”
My Nigerian friend explained, “As an international student, when I was a freshman, I often felt out of place in classroom settings because I sounded different from everyone and it was my first time being identified as a ‘minority.’ Also, the expectation that people from different backgrounds need to educate Americans about their culture is wrong.” Further, despite English being one of our primary languages back home, more often than not, my international friends and I are also praised for our ability to speak in English by our peers and professors. A friend from Ethiopia further elaborated on her experience in classroom settings. She said, “Professors take my unawareness of American ways as ignorance.” As a Resident Assistant, she mentioned, “I have been told that I did certain things because I am African, by a parent of a senior on closing day.”
My friend from Rwanda identified a foundational issue that leads to these microaggressions. He said, “The system here in America doesn’t teach a lot about the international community thus students can’t really be blamed.” My friend from Singapore expressed, “During the holidays or long weekends when everyone goes home and we as international students don’t have anywhere to go.”
A friend from Lebanon said it well: “It can get lonely, and yes we all miss our dogs and cats, but at least we always have each other to fall back on.”