Interesting is the word that came out of my mind. As an international student coming all the way here to pursue a better education. A lot of things are so different with the culture, the system, and of course, the language. I had to fly for 24+ hours plus transit hours to come here, quite a long duration of flight but when I came here, I stepped into LaGuardia Community College, I felt this is strange, I saw people so diverse in ages, colors, and everything; not saying that my country does not have that, it was just different.
In the first year I lived here, everything did not work for me, I could not get any financial aid as I am not an in-state or resident student. It is tough to pay quite a large amount of money, but I keep trying to figure out how to survive here. One thing that I learned was to be proactive or active, I could not stay in one place and wait for someone to come to me. Then talked to me about what kind of programs can help students generally if I were not the one who seeks it. This helped me to gain my confidence and courage to speak in public as well, I felt like I was here to find my rights as well.
Well because of that I started discovering everything and finding a way to help ease a bit my financial burden, at least make it less burden to me. I did not think that my achievements could help me in some way. Also, not only: finding an internship as well, it is a struggle for an international student to find an internship since most of the internships are not qualified for international students, they would prefer to find US Citizens and residents. The opportunity is limited for me because of sponsorship and some paperwork. I wish that I had more options to choose from and that the campus would have workshops to help international students as well. Well I am aware that the campus is general and open to everyone, it is just I wish there were one workshop to inform us about some opportunities as international students.
Furthermore, on campus, the international student services only have one advisor for all international students while I believe the campus has a lot of international students. From what I have heard from my friend who works in that office, a day, at least 50-150 students will come. Also, she mentioned this office is the busiest as international students come to ask questions and make sure their status is valid. In addition, we have struggled to make an appointment with the advisor because they do not have a system to make an appointment with the advisor but it is a walk-in appointment. However, they will say that we can email the advisor to make an appointment, but unfortunately, the advisor does not respond. Well.. I do understand that she handles a lot of students but still, I hope that they can have another advisor to talk to as it is hard to even make an appointment, on the other hand, students have to wait for 30 minutes to 1 hour or more because students do not know when will they be called to meet the advisor while they may have another class in another 30 minutes or an hour.
Sadly, I want the campus to establish a bit better system for international students to have equity as other students.
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Hi Joane, thanks for sharing your experiences at the intersection of CUNY and being an international student. I cannot imagine being geographically far from your family as well as navigating the international student landscape at CUNY. Your sentiments sound similar to what many others are expressing about the lack of advisement, and for your needs particularly. I think there’s potential for a project here to organize our student voices and demand more consistent and available advisement, and to pay attention to the margins of the student population: special needs, multilinguals/immigrants, international students, first-gen, etc. Let’s chat!