dobiboome
Oct 10, 2012
Undergraduate / 'being a foreigner is a constant burden' - Feedback on Harvard [3]
I can still precisely recall the feeling that struck me when my mother and stepfather told me and my sister about their plan to move to America. It was an odd mixture of nervousness, excitement, fear, panic and joy that was so overwhelming that it felt like time had suddenly stopped and I was soaring in an ether of numbness. I couldn't decide whether or not this life-changing experience was something that I should look forward to, or something that would come to cause me more troubles than rewards. And even though my excitement eventually pacified my fears, I could not bear the thought of only seeing my father once or twice per year or the fact that I would most probably never meet the people whom, in the past sixteen years, I had come to stand the closest to.
But as the obstinate optimist I was and remain, I forced myself to disregard any feeling of doubt. I developed a strong feeling that America would welcome me and my family with a better future.
Although I had throughout my life traveled quite a lot around the world, and been in the U.S. multiple times during my childhood, the difference between Sweden and America was bigger than I could ever have imagined.
All of my life I had been a fountainhead. A loquacious, confident and social boy who took a lot of emotional space wherever he went. Now however, I sat in the back of the classroom and tried not to gain anyone's attention. I was greatly ashamed of my mediocre english and transformed into a taciturn soul, answering lengthy questions with a simple"yes" or "no". I knew that this would be the biggest hurdle I would have to overcome, and even when I was lonelier than ever, I never doubted that I would.
As I continued to walk through the dark tunnel, I finally started to glimpse the light, and as the end of the second semester approached, the doors finally opened for me. My communication skills developed quite rapidly, and as a result I begun to greatly enjoy conversing with my classmates. Slowly, yet surely, I started to not only re-develop myself into who I used to be, but to progress beyond my old self. I saw my own faults with greater clarity, but I also saw my own strengths like never before. America turned out to be everything I ever hoped for and more, and I am confident that there is not a better place that I could have moved.
The most important lesson that I have learned on my journey through the tunnel, is that being a foreigner is a constant burden, a continuous feeling out of sorts. It is a parenthesis in what had once been ordinary life, only to discover that that previous life have vanished, and been replaced by something more complicated and demanding. But it is most importantly an opportunity. An opportunity to restart your life on a different level, in a different world. It is the unique opportunity to become something more than you ever thought you could be.
I can still precisely recall the feeling that struck me when my mother and stepfather told me and my sister about their plan to move to America. It was an odd mixture of nervousness, excitement, fear, panic and joy that was so overwhelming that it felt like time had suddenly stopped and I was soaring in an ether of numbness. I couldn't decide whether or not this life-changing experience was something that I should look forward to, or something that would come to cause me more troubles than rewards. And even though my excitement eventually pacified my fears, I could not bear the thought of only seeing my father once or twice per year or the fact that I would most probably never meet the people whom, in the past sixteen years, I had come to stand the closest to.
But as the obstinate optimist I was and remain, I forced myself to disregard any feeling of doubt. I developed a strong feeling that America would welcome me and my family with a better future.
Although I had throughout my life traveled quite a lot around the world, and been in the U.S. multiple times during my childhood, the difference between Sweden and America was bigger than I could ever have imagined.
All of my life I had been a fountainhead. A loquacious, confident and social boy who took a lot of emotional space wherever he went. Now however, I sat in the back of the classroom and tried not to gain anyone's attention. I was greatly ashamed of my mediocre english and transformed into a taciturn soul, answering lengthy questions with a simple"yes" or "no". I knew that this would be the biggest hurdle I would have to overcome, and even when I was lonelier than ever, I never doubted that I would.
As I continued to walk through the dark tunnel, I finally started to glimpse the light, and as the end of the second semester approached, the doors finally opened for me. My communication skills developed quite rapidly, and as a result I begun to greatly enjoy conversing with my classmates. Slowly, yet surely, I started to not only re-develop myself into who I used to be, but to progress beyond my old self. I saw my own faults with greater clarity, but I also saw my own strengths like never before. America turned out to be everything I ever hoped for and more, and I am confident that there is not a better place that I could have moved.
The most important lesson that I have learned on my journey through the tunnel, is that being a foreigner is a constant burden, a continuous feeling out of sorts. It is a parenthesis in what had once been ordinary life, only to discover that that previous life have vanished, and been replaced by something more complicated and demanding. But it is most importantly an opportunity. An opportunity to restart your life on a different level, in a different world. It is the unique opportunity to become something more than you ever thought you could be.
