While the closing month of the semester ushers in the holiday season and the scramble of many students across campus to trek home, many international students are not afforded that luxury. In fact, for the thousands currently enrolled at MSU — 7,643 enrolled during the Fall 2014 semester according to the Office for International Students and Scholars — “home” can be on another part of the globe. This distance inspires many to find creative ways to stay connected with friends and family back home and provides unique resources to forge new friendships at MSU.
Oceans Away
While moving in to live on campus can be an exciting yet stressful time for freshmen, international students moving to MSU face additional challenges.
Mechanical engineering freshman Zohaq Syed came to MSU from Bangalore, India, also shared a similar move-in experience earlier this year. Syed, however, attended an international school growing up, so he was already familiar with a variety of American customs and brands.
“At first it was a little bit odd, I was a bit nervous,” Syed said. “The fact that I’m just coming in as an international student — I don’t know what’s going on, I don’t know anything. Everything turned out to be okay, it was fun. It was just hard because I’m literally coming from all the way on the other side of the world.”
During their move–ins as freshmen, both Lonikar and Syed were able to have their families stay and spend a few nights with them. However, once the semester started and their families parted ways, staying connected became a high priority.
Connecting over Continents
For many domestic students, a simple phone call or quick trip home can be a solution to forgetting an important document or homesickness.
For international students, however, staying connected to their home community can mean a myriad of international rates and fees, time zones and other struggles. Many have turned to technology and various applications to come up with creative ways to stay connected.
Surveying a small sample of international students about which applications they preferred to use to connect with friends and family back home revealed that while a wide variety of applications and platforms are utilized, a few in particular are the most popular.
Many students noted Skype, WhatsApp and FaceTime as the most common applications they used to keep in touch with friends and family back home. Facebook, Snapchat and Instagram were also used.
WeChat, a similar application to FaceTime, is very popular in China and among Chinese international students.
Each of the applications offers users a different way to interact with friends and family.
Lonikar said that with a good Internet connection, the video aspect of Skype adds a special touch to her interactions with her parents.
“Especially when I’m homesick and stuff, just looking at my parents or my friends and I can see the house in the background and it makes me feel better,” she said. “It makes me feel like I’m over there instead of over here.”
Syed said he also enjoys using Skype with his parents for the visual aspect, but said when he is in an emergency or needs to send a quick message, he prefers chat-based applications such as WhatsApp that can run off of 3G or WiFi networks.
“I had a deadline to pay the tuition fees. It was during Labor Day weekend, so my dad wired the money except it didn’t reach it to them on time. So they were about to charge me and say that if I don’t pay by this date again I will be disenrolled from the courses,” Syed said. “That’s when WhatsApp came in handy. That was one of those close calls. Thank God for technology.”
Forging Friendships
While applications and technology help international students stay connected with friends and family back at home, unique programs and resources help international students to connect to the MSU community.
“There’s the clubs for students from different countries,” Lonikar said. “The international student organization for Indians (Indian Students Organization) — it helps me stay connected to my culture and the celebrations that happen and festivals, all of that. So I don’t lose touch with my culture but I’m also interacting with people of this culture.”
While many student groups and organizations such as the International Students Association (ISA) and the Asian Pacific American Student Organization (APASO), are commonly known, other unique programs and resources are offered by the MSU community as well.
The Community Volunteers for International Programs(CVIP), an organization that has been at MSU for more than 50 years, provides a unique program to help international students connect with the MSU community.
The International Friendship Program for Students matches an international student with an American individual or family who are members of the Lansing community.
“(It is) just a way for International Students to get better acquainted with American life,” Chairman of CVIP Larry Karnes said.
Karnes said the program strives to foster friendship between international students and community members. The international students and community volunteers are asked to meet together to do a fun activity or outing at least once a month.
Graduate student Man Ling Hsieh was recently matched in the Friendship Program for Students this semester.
“(The Friendship Program for Students) gave me a chance to know more people and we did fun things together and got to know some more things about what’s going on in the city,” Hsieh said in an email. “On Halloween, we carved pumpkins and took pictures with homemade costumes. It’s really fun!”
Along with making special memories, the program also helps Hsieh to acclimate to American culture and navigate the MSU community.
“For me it’s good to have a local friend here to get to know more about the way people communicate and can learn more about the culture,” Hsien said via text message. “As international students, sometimes it’s only things on campus, to get a friend off campus is interesting because the things you know has broadened.”
