It all started when I finished high school. At that time, I did not have a concrete plan of what I should do ; I just studied well so i can study medicine in the UK. When I look back now, lots of things led to me being here. In 2015, after graduating high school I started contacting universities in UK ,but to no avail and time just flew by; one year passed while trying in all possible ways to study medicine there until a staff member of a certain university told me frankly it's hard to be accepted in medicine in UK and it was extremely expensive for me as well .A year passed by which was devastating because I had this thought that I should apply right after high school like all other students ingrained in my mind. I started to think differently that I wanted to be satisfied with what I am doing, feeling fulfillment by helping others. Something that by the end of my life makes me think like ‘yes I've spent 100000 hours doing this job' so I decided to study medicine in turkey and I became even more confident about what I want; I applied to a university and was accepted ,but then my father had a financial problem so later by the help of my mother I applied in another university which i believe now is better. I was the type of kid who was very dependent on her parents' money to study in school and university; don't get me wrong I am not spoiled or anything i was just raised like that; i was young after all and I was never pushed to the edge as now to start working and earning my own money ,to stand on my own two legs. I always wanted to be independent financially ,but not like this; I had a robotic way of thinking of getting my degree first then start to depend on myself. After graduating from school, I took two gap years, two years of anyone's most precious time “youth”. When I finally started university I was 21 by then, the emotions I went through those two years were horrible; I was really depressed seeing everyone from school going to universities except me; it left a huge impact on my personality, for some people this might look trivial ,but for me it was my future; it was everything on stake simply because there was no other way for me to study medicine unless i travel abroad and to study medicine in a private university which is not cheap. I started thinking will i even start studying in a university; I did not want to study in my country because that would mean I'll just study business and stay in my shell. I wanted to travel and experience everything that comes with traveling from depending solely on my self to having new friends, new encounters, meeting people with different views on life from different cultures which eventually happened. In my teens, I used to watch lots of Turkish dramas which made me want to learn Turkish language and go to Turkey as a tourist ,but never thought of coming here as a student. In the two years, I had taken a Turkish language course; it was a nice experience to learn Turkish which helped me later on when I decided to go to Turkey. In 2017, I finally started university and yes my financial problem was not yet solved not even till now, but somehow the ship sailed although I still have debts to my university. Now I should be in 3rd year, but that's still vague because my financial problem got worse; it's this year that I started to think out of the box when the pressure inside was too much for me to handle. It's these kinds of situations that actually make us who we are and know how to tackle our problems. This summer because of the pressure of the makeup exam which if I failed would mean I lost another year and the money problem; I had decided to start working already.One thing led to the other; in my gap year I used to read comics and novels so I thought why not start writing and publishing a novel online myself; I started entering contests such as this one and I also started my own comic with a collaboration with a comic artist which I hope will be published soon. Yes, I accept what is happening with me, but that doesn't mean I should give up; It only means I should try harder until I get that degree. Indeed moving to another country now after I settled here is not easy furthermore it was hard for me to be emotionally stable because as much as I wanted to travel abroad, in my first year reality hit me hard and I started missing my family and I even regretted coming to Turkey ; I was very depressed, but that all subsided now; I became more independent; I have friends who stood beside me and made me feel as if they were my second family here. As I am writing this ; it strikes me how much I've changed through these last couple of years into a mature, strong-willed woman from just an indecisive high school girl, so if someone is reading this who went through a bad experience don't worry, you're not alone and always remember it's all for your best because believe me you will flourish into something really beautiful and remember everything happens for a reason.
The Paris skyline shined brighter that night. Maybe it was the 2nd glass of the cheapest rose we could find, maybe it was the perfectly timed sparkle of the Eiffel tower reflecting on the buildings in sight from my balcony. I laid back in my chair, put my feet on the railing, loosely gripping the thin stem of my wine glass and listened to the sounds of the Paris nightlife. My roommate Anis, sat on the floor next to me and leaned her head into the night. The stars were covered by clouds but still, I could feel them shining light upon the dimly lit streets below us. A woman lit a cigarette and it seemed to awaken something within Anis as her own hand seemed to drift to her sweatshirt pocket by its own accord, pulling out a thin, messily rolled cigarette and brought it to her mouth. She put her hand back into her pocket, but it came out empty, so I reached into my own and pulled out a light pink lighter and lit it myself as she breathed in. She offered me one, but I don't smoke so I shook my head and she went back to synchronizing her breaths to that of the woman on the street beneath us. Soon enough this woman was gone and our focus was on a man standing by the bus stop. I looked to my phone for the time, frowned, and hoped the man wasn't hoping for a ride. The buses were long parked and the metro now full of the homeless in chrysalis, trying to escape the harsh reality of night. Anis gave me the look, the one you give when you've had a bit too much wine and you've decided that you're going to be a dumb college student for a moment, when you want to let everything go and ignore the fact that it's 3 am on a Wednesday night, ignore the 9 am calculus class you have in the morning, ignore the four missed facetime calls from your parents that you only ignored because your phone is already on low battery and you did have some wine so you weren't sure if any of your sentences that came out were even coherent anymore and because you decided you would text them in the morning that you were tired and wanted a good night's rest before your calc test the next morning. Anis's eyes lit up as she opened her mouth as wide as she could. “Yoohoo!” she laughed, as we do on nights like this, shouting into the great expanse hoping that someone may answer us back. I followed suit, we let our laughter die, and we waited. We waited for something, for anything to shout back and remind us we are not alone. We waited for the stars to come out form the curtain of clouds and put on for us a show. We waited for random historical figures of the 1920s to come out of the shadows like they did in that Owen Wilson movie. We waited… and waited… and waited… and waited for what could have been months days, minutes, mere seconds until the sound of the balcony door opening took us out of our trance. “Hey could one of you guys give me light, I think I left my lighter at school,” my other roommate Rebecca asked, leaning her forearms on the railings. My eyes losing their fog looked up to her blankly, handed her my lighter, and went back to look at the guy by the bus stop. But, just as quickly as our voices faded into the atmosphere, he was gone.
Have you ever woke up so early in the morning while the sky is still dark, the quiteness remains around you, you are still on the bed, looking at the ceiling and feeling like you are home? Have you ever thought if you had a power to fly or you can just be wherever you can, you would wish to be first immediately home? Or probably in a silent moment, you just sit, taking a deep breath, looking at the sky, and your heart is just taken away becuase of the distance? Have you ever wondering how is everyone doing there on the other side of the world? Have you ever seen others' posting photos with their family on those social media, and you just miss the time when you used to spend together with your family? Or maybe sometime when you go for a walk, you see parents holding their kid's hands walking around, and you just miss the time when you were young? If you have been that, tell me how do you feel? And what can you do? Sometime it is hard to hold the feeling inside, isn't it? so you let your tear down, and you may feel a bit better. That is your homesick feeling, and yeah, HOME, a place you spend with your family back then. Home, where your past great memories were created. Being homesick is another stage of culture shocks that happens when you are in a foreign country. It is called dissolution. You start missing your hometown, foods, friends, family..etc. Generally, i am talking about students' living and studying abroad. If you are homesick, take a deep breath, keep reminding yourself of the reasons that you decided to come to this place. Start thinking of your goals and your future, reminding yourself that there are still a long way to go through, and of course, there are still lots of fights left to tou. You cannot just stop here or there unless it is finished! Thus, you have to be strong! Only you can make it happens. You have to make your parents proud of what you're going to achieve. You have to focus on the present that you are here, you are on the process of making your dream come true, and no matter how hard it is to bear, you have to keep holding on. Although each step is about breaking a mountain or going through fire, Do it! Being alone or independent is the best opportunity for you to strengthen yourself and develope your maturity. After a year, you will miss today, and you will be proud of a progress you have made through these messy life experiences. When looking back, you will see the different between the Old and the New You. It is not neccesary to let the world knows that you are working hard or having a hard time because only you yourself truly understand how it is. The world will not care what or how you are doing; it will just judge you base on your result, and You deserve more than being judged. Here I am telling you, if you are already here, if you already decided to walk on this way, please give it a big try! Make the best out of it! Struggle as hard as you can! Hold it tight no matter how big the wave is! It's worth trying!! It does ! One day your hard work will paid off. Be here with who you are, take this opportunity to find the best version of yourself. Do not spend too much time being dramatic about life because you will just waste your life times. Have a nice day !!
We, human beings, tend to build intimate and emotional connections towards various things we encounter and places we visit. If our relationships with these things or places come to an end; we may well mourn their absence or go through an experience of remembrance. This emotional and existential remembrance could include our past experiences, actions, places we have been to and people we met. This is what we could define as Nostalgia; the emotional yearning for the past, for places and things that we sentimentally associate with. We could find ourselves often trapped in the past, be it pleasant or unpleasant. In such a situation, our remembrance and nostalgic feelings could be evoked by different external stimuli. Even the slightest stimulation can incite nostalgia. In this sense; a scent, a scene, a person, a voice, an action or a place have the ability to stimulate a tape of similar experiences inside our heads. As an international student abroad, I would argue that people would vouch that it is quite natural to be nostalgic, experience homesickness and potential loneliness. A foreign country, a foreign culture and a foreign language, it is indeed obvious that I'm highly likely to miss home. However, the feelings of nostalgia could be relatively different from person to person. In my case, I do not miss the physical place or people per si as much as I miss my past experiences with them. As a Muslim female student, I would say my presence is constantly received as an accumulation of ideas held and interpreted differently by different people. Yet, my true self is always concealed and never received. In my culture, that is highly conservative and sometimes unfortunately sexist, I'm required to live according to the norms of the society, fulfill certain rules allocated to me as a female and prohibited from certain activities that are the monopoly of men. According to their beliefs, I'm not required to have a strong and independent opinion because, by and large, I'm expected to be a ladylike, decent wife and mother regardless of my values, and thoughts. Living under this canopy of rules always tortured me and silenced my entity in fear of being rejected by the society. On the other side of the fence, the situation is not significantly different as a veiled Muslim student abroad. Namely, a lot of people do receive me as a representation of a barbaric, oppressing culture and a terrorist religion. I, frequently, see frightened and hate looks on the faces of people. I try to fit in but the cultural barriers are always a major hurdle. I'm, thus, never received based on who I am or on my thoughts, but rather on my appearance and gender. All these unfortunate experiences made me constantly pressured and nostalgic to the past, to my childhood and teenage years, where I used to be independent, dreamy, strong-willed. I never imagined that my life would take this critical turn and become caged in the so-called world of stereotypes held by others. An influential experience which incited a sudden nostalgia took place in my first Yoga experience. When I arrived at the location, I immediately got a soothing homey feeling due to the warmth of the room and the gentle waft of the incense. We sat down around a beautifully-lit candle in the middle, held each other's hands and listened to a soothing meditation music. I and the instructor held hands, At that particular moment, I had strange feelings of warmth and compassion. Feelings I only used to know when I was younger; when I used to come back from school or sports training, play with my cat, watch my favourite animation on tv, swim in my imagination to be like one of the imaginary animated heroes in the show, and wait for my mother to come back from work to tell her about my day, adventures, my dreams and how I look forward to making them true. I had a sudden flashback; a recreation of the past in front of my eyes, my tears uncontrollably fell down afterward. As soon as the session finished, I realized that it was time to get back to the real world; the world where I'm no longer that strong dreamy child. The instructor looked me in the eyes and said “you will be alright”, I felt she was looking at my heart and that she sensed my sentiments and the overflow of emotions through my skin. I still experience the after effects of my first yoga session because it was utterly nostalgic and a sudden reminiscence of the past. It was like a psychedelic experience of feelings and memories. It is, indeed, enchanting how a single experience stimulated countless feelings and memories through a vivid flashback. All in all, it is terrible that people in both cultures treat me as an embodiment of social and cultural representation instead of a person with an independent entity. Nevertheless, one thing I learned from this existential experience is that we should effortlessly fight for who we are, our dreams and voices.