There’s a lot behind the beautiful pictures and flashy sceneries of Ivy league universities. When you go to such a selective school, there’s a high chance that you’ll be the only person from your country (I’m the only Central Asian here, let alone only Uzbek). This means that it will be very hard to find people who were brought up with the same values as yours. While it’s true that you MUST “expand your horizons,” escape your bubble and meet people from all walks of life (which is crucial to building a global reasoning and preparing for “adult-life”), having at least 2-3 people who you can resonate with, who had similar experiences to yours, and for god's sake SPEAK THE SAME LANGUAGE AS YOU would make everything so much easier. 

All other countries send at least 2-3 students every year, so most international have at least 2-3 people who speak the same language as them or share the same nationality. But, if you’re an Uzbek, you encounter people thinking you’re from Pakistan and that Uzbekistan is a village with mountains and huts. This isn’t essentially bad and it’s not their fault that they’re not informed about your country, and the university admitted you so that you can introduce your nationality to your friends, but having at least ONE person from Uzbekistan (gosh at least Central Asia), having a couple meals a week with them and trying to navigate this whole transition to America together would make the overall experience so much less stressful. If we go at it, even finding Russian-speaking people is difficult here (I met only 2 so far).

Nonetheless, I think that if you’re unable to go through this shift, you don’t deserve to represent your country in that particular elite institution, but gosh it feels unfair that mostly everyone else at least has access to a community which is somewhat close-to-home (not to be stuck in it forever, but to sometimes hang out with each other once in a while and get nostalgic about life back home).  

This is just my opinion, and you might disagree with me and say that having no Uzbek or Central Asian people around you is better (for whatever weird reason).

Anyways, my first 5 days at Harvard have been going pretty good so far, getting better every next day. Today was the last day of the Freshman International Program, which means that now we have to hang out with Americans, nice :/