Making A Case

The benefits of study abroad are almost endless. First of all, it’s going to make you much more marketable here in the United States, because more and more companies are realizing that they need people with experiences around the world, who can speak different languages, who can transition easily into other cultures and people who bring to their jobs a sensibility and a sensitivity for other people.

 

It will also make you more compassionate. We could always use more compassionate, young leaders out there in the world, people who are willing to step outside their comfort zones and be open to wiping away misconceptions.

 

Especially for U.S. students, it’s very hard to stay in your comfort zone when you’re living in another country. When you’re struggling with a language, new foods, learning directions, being forced to make friends and do things that you wouldn’t normally do, that’s going to set you up for a lifetime of value. It’s going to make you a better parent. It’s going to make you a better human being.

 

I want more young people like you to take that step. Try something new, travel abroad, and if you can’t travel abroad, use the Internet to see the world.

 

President Barak Obama, March 2014.

Studying Abroad: Maximizing the Experience

The Case for Studying Abroad

The benefits of international study go well beyond having a great experience. Americans who studied abroad earned on average $7,000 more in starting salaries than their peers who didn’t go overseas. In a recent 50-year survey of study abroad alumni, three-quarters said they acquired skill sets that influenced their career path, 80 percent reported more interest in their academic studies, and 96 percent said their time abroad increased their self-confidence. Research shows that studying abroad might even make you smarter. A recent study found that engaging with and adapting to new cultures helps students become better problem solvers, think more complexly, and demonstrate more creativity — all traits that pay off in any career.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/richard-stengel/prolific-exploration-the-_b_6198774.html

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With this said, how can students maximize their study abroad experience?

I want to hear from you so please share your thoughts!

A Letter

Dear [insert your name here],

Coming home has been more difficult than I could have ever imagined. My homecoming was peppered with feelings of warmth and love, a return to where it all began. Yet, coming home was contemporaneously a point of embarkation, the beginning of a new chapter in my life, a voyage across the sea of sense and sensibility. As I try to identify with home, the harder it seems to moor. Living in India for four months, I adapted and I understood. I must do the same now at home. With Thanksgiving on our heels, I will, harvest a new identity. I will sow the seeds of experience to cultivate a new perspective on life. I will set my eyes on the new world. I maximized the study abroad experience in the land of curd and chutney and now take it upon myself to do the same in the land of milk and honey.

To those forthcoming students who are thinking about studying abroad, I urge you to do so with intent. I am a firm believer in making the study abroad experience a more comprehensive process—an informative and a transformative experience. Take time for reflection and take that leap into the void to discover the inconceivable. Best wishes for your journey that lies ahead.

p.s. don’t forget to “live in the sunshine, swim the sea, drink the wild air” – Ralph Waldo Emerson

Yours,

Aleksandr Chandra

A Final Farewell

“India shaped my mind, anchored my identity, influenced my beliefs, and made me who I am. … India matters to me and I would like to matter to India.”
― Shashi Tharoor

Thank you.

One Day Left in India…

Lord, make me an instrument of thy peace!

That where there is hatred, I may bring love.

That where there is wrong, I may bring the spirit of forgiveness.

That where there is discord, I may bring harmony.

That where there is error, I may bring truth.

That where there is doubt, I may bring faith.

That where there is despair, I may bring hope.

That where there are shadows, I may bring light.

That where there is sadness, I may bring joy.

Lord, grant that I may seek rather to comfort, than to be comforted.

To understand, than to be understood.

To love, than to be loved.

For it is by self-forgetting that one finds.

It is by forgiving that one is forgiven.

It is by dying that one awakens to Eternal Life.

—Saint Francis of Assisi—

Only 4 More Days…

“There is no home as comfortable as your father’s arms and no bed as soft as your mother’s lap.”
― Faraaz Kazi

Only Six More Days…

Only six more days and I leave home to go home. I leave my India.

Homecoming

I am now from dust, from Dettol, and Delhi.

I am now from the cotton curtains that cascade down the window.

(Brown, warm, they smelled like incense).

I am now from the jasmine shrubs

the Mango Tree

Whose green leaves unfurl to drink the wild air.

I am still from puja and unconditional love,

From Michele and Prashant and Chandra.

I’m still from the know-it-alls and the pay-it-forwards,

from never give up! and never give in!

I am still from itni shukti hame dena data

O Lord! Give us the strength to keep our faith firm in you

And other Hindu verses I mumble beneath my breath.

I am now from a bungalow in Bangalore, a flat in Kanpur,

White saris and sweet mangoes.

From an ignorance I lost seeing,

To an understanding I found believing

Inside this American chest

is an Indian soul,

Feeling these memories and those moments,

The ones I can and will relive.

With the warmth of a new day on my chest,

I take a key to its door, and unlock…

Acknowledgements

“Gratitude can transform common days into thanksgivings, turn routine jobs into joy, and change ordinary opportunities into blessings.” – William Arthur Ward

To those who have touched my life when in India, I take the time now to express to you my many, many thanks…

I would first and foremost like to thank all of the students and faculty in Kamala Nehru College’s psychology department for their undying support and admiration. Our fourth months spent together proved to me that Kamala Nehru College is a unique institution that fosters all round learning of each student to recognize the true value of an education. I will miss everyone in the department dearly and wish the institution, faculty, and students all the best with their future endeavors.

I would like to thank Maitri and Aashirwad Old Age Home for offering me the unique opportunity to continue my research studying aging in the Indian context in India. It was a remarkably pleasant experience being able to enter, interact, and connect with the elderly on a personal level in their milieu.

I would also like to express my dearest appreciation for Executive Director of AgeWell Foundation, Himanshu Rath, Dr. Nayanjot Lahiri, Dr. Sarah Lamb, administration at Antara Senior Living, Mr. Neeraj Mehta at Vatsalya Gram, Geetika and Sanchi at Manzil, and Tanmay at Maitri for their continuous guidance and sincere investment in my entrepreneurial efforts in India. Had it not been for you all, I may still be out to sea.

I would also like to congratulate and thank all of my fellow colleagues and friends in the IES Abroad Delhi program. It has been, without a doubt, a blessed experience with all of you here in Delhi and around the country.

To IES Abroad, thank you for affording me this life changing experience. I am so glad I made the decision to be a student in this phenomenal program.

To my family in India, thank you for welcoming me with open arms. Your presence and our time together will be cherished in my heart forevermore. Indeed, each of you is like a rare book of which but only one copy was made. Thank you for letting me be a part of your story, and you be a part of mine.

To my family in the U.S., thank you for the outpouring of love and support from across the world. I am very appreciative for this experience and hope that I am making you proud.

As my initial post uttered in its final line—“I yearn to finally feel that harmonious and peaceful symphony of nature’s amphitheater, vibrate the chords of my very Indian soul”—I can honestly say now that my dream has been fulfilled.

Many thanks,

An Indian-American Soul

A Visit To Aashirwad

It took only one visit to realize that those who have the most life experience have lived life the longest. On Thursday I visited an old age home in the east of Delhi. My inchoate curiosity and passion to study an age demographic that has recently been slated by the influx of modernity and urbanization provoked me to step out of my shoes and into their chappals for once. Upon arriving, I was heartily welcomed by the organization’s manager who sat with me for some time to discuss the elderly home’s organizational structure and culture. We were eventually joined by one of the guests living in the elderly home. He was only eighty-six years young and was leaving to visit his daughter who lived twenty minutes away. He assured me that he did not want to leave because doing so would mean that he would be gone for some time. I sensed that his web of attachments had become very proximal. Although it would mean he would be seeing his own daughter, the old age home was his home, a place where he felt comfortable to live out the remaining years of his life. I then went upstairs to visit an elderly woman. She had become bedridden after taking a nasty fall in the bathroom only ten days prior. She was in severe pain but wanted me to sit down next to her to talk.  In Hindi, she told me she didn’t understand the youth nowadays. Families only get together during the holidays and then leave one another. There is no respect for the elderly. I, not taking this personally of course, reassured her that I was here for her now. While I recognize that Indian society is witnessing the dissolution of the joint family, where one’s attachments to others are being severed as a result of an incipient globalization, I believe that intergenerational contact can indeed be a fountain of youth for both age demographics. It is when two polar age groups come together that we realize “you can’t help getting older, but you don’t have to get old.”