From 'Zim' to 萨拉托加温泉市: My unexpected journey to 火博体育大学

If you had told me six 年前 that I would be sitting in an American café right now, a mile or so from the college where I am currently enrolled in a 创意写作 程序 — with additional educational 经验s in China and Greece under my belt, I might have deeply frowned with genuine concern for your sanity.

这个可怜的人真是疯了?，我会礼貌地微笑 and recounted the ridiculous suggestion to my mother later that day, or called my 最好的朋友和她一起笑. 我会做很多事情， 除了相信你.

I say this in the most unembellished and earnest way — I am truly living a life that I did not have the aspirational capacity or the imagination to hope for just a few 年前.

But I’m here now — at 火博体育大学 — and some days I can hardly believe it.

Anesu Mukombiwa ' 24

I grew up in tiny Harare (Zimbabwe’s capital), with purple jacaranda summers and fire-roasted peanut winters, the kind that forced us to huddle together in my family’s living room and watch reruns of “Generations” (a South African soap opera) because something about 那是温暖的，那是加热的.

I loved Zim — as we like to call our country — like a teenager loves their parents, 翻白眼，沉默不语. I loved it for granted; I know that now, but only 因为我已经错过了将近六年了. 

I remember only a little bit of the first half of my 16th year, which mostly consisted of waiting impatiently to leave for China in late August to begin my 世界联合书院 经验. I think a part of me had already left by the time 我是一个ctually set 飞出去. I was in the clouds somewhere, building and thickening my expectations, filling them with all sorts of hopes like seeing the Great Wall of China, or a 真的, 真的 高的摩天大楼.

What I never anticipated was actually getting to do all those things and more. It was a life-altering two years, filled with its share of troubles and joys. 当我 think back on this time of my life I usually land on two words: coming awake. 我发现 many new things about myself, things that I might have never accessed without the challenges of my early departure from my home; things that were only the beginning of the full-fledged passions that would enrapture my college years at Skidmore.

我一直是个作家. From the moment I learned how to write, I wanted to tell 故事. Before I could tell them, I listened to them intently at my grandmother’s feet, gasping at the rabbit that ate the baboon and growing this first love.

我一看到 创造性思维很重要 on the Skidmore website, as cheesy as this probably seems, I actually knew this was 我想去的学校. 我申请 早期的决定 然后进去了. 就是这样. 这就是应用程序故事. 市场营销非常成功 我也不耻于承认这一点.

来到火博体育非常非常 奇怪的. 我是一个 一年级的学生 in 2020 (the first year of the pandemic), which was a truly challenging year for 很多人，包括我自己. 这很艰难，很尴尬，我决定离开 campus for my sophomore year to seek out a different college 经验 in Europe 在雅典读完大学，这是火博体育批准的 出国留学 程序. 这真的是我一生中最好的决定.

I dream of my time abroad often — that neighborhood specifically, with its sprawling Athenian cats and the bright-faced grocery store man whom I habitually waved at on 我从学校回来的路上. It gave me the reset that I needed, a new environment, a 新的视角，新的希望.

By the time I returned to the Skidmore campus for my junior year, I was feeling like a 一年级的学生 again — wide-eyed, seeking, and ready to try again.

Being an international student is searching for home in anyone and anything else because 那是你最想念的一件事. 我记得见到了一些我最亲密的朋友 now in the first week of my return and feeling that “home” feeling. 我会遇见 more and more of these kinds of people as the semester progressed.

My junior year was a year of rekindled things — home rekindled in friends; first love 在创意写作工作坊和 英语课; song rekindled in a cappella rehearsals. 我把自己和全家都泡在里面了 dinners, musical performances, and essay 写作 I could get myself into.

与 毕业 on the horizon, when I 真的 want to turn on the nostalgia, I think back to the first spring break I spent on campus, only sleeping and showering at home and doing the rest of my living in my friend’s apartment where we would watch movies and talk about nothing for hours, feeling suspended in time, in this foreign place that has somehow 这里成了我的家.

For sending me away and welcoming me back, I’m thankful to this place. 三加一 半年来，火博体育什么都不欠我.