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By Nicole Zhen
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[dropcap]M[/dropcap]ovement is tethered by tension between the past and the present—the place of departure and arrival. It is also the shifting steps we take as the present flickers by, the momentum towards where we have always dreamt of moving to, and the openness to transformation in between. We asked three first-year students to share where they have been and hope to go, and how they’ve reached New Haven, Connecticut.
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Omar Chishti from Dubai, United Arab Emirates
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Omar Chishti is a first-year in Grace Hopper College from Dubai, United Arab Emirates.
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The Globalist: What does the word “move” mean to you?
Chishti: When I was growing up, my dad was in the military, and moving was a constant thing. Every few years, we should shift cities, go from one corner of the Indian subcontinent to the other. So, it wasn’t this grand, big thing that was on the horizon somewhere after eighteen years at home. For me, it was every two or three years that we were shifting homes. Homes were very transient things. They weren’t our own houses; we were living on bases. And just constantly shifting schools—seven, eight schools over my childhood. It was just like a constant process. All the time, we were moving.
Indirectly, because of this constant movement, because I didn’t have the same group of friends for eighteen years, because I was always forced to make a new group once every few years—what ended up happening was I focused a lot on myself as a child. And these are things I wrote about in my Common App too: the movement, how my homes were like houses of cards, and how I keep moving all the time. And I think the metaphor was like lego-brick houses: my friends lived in lego bricks; they lived in stable homes; I played with houses of cards and moved around all the time. That forced me to work a lot on myself, learn to spend time with myself, read a lot more than I would have otherwise. And all those things made me have more focus—or spend more time thinking about what I want to do very early on, which I feel helped me get here [to Yale].
The Globalist: How did you move to come to Yale?
Chishti: I got a flight. It was an eighteen hour flight. But the process that led up to it started much, much earlier. For most international students, it’s a conscious decision you make fairly early on. For me, it was back in seventh grade, when I was choosing which school I would be going to to complete my education. Either I take the track that mostly everyone takes and I focus on local universities and prepare for local exams, or I take the other track—the international track—and I take things like the IB for my diploma. I take the SAT, the subject tests. So it’s a decision you have to make very early on. And it’s even more complicated because we have lots of countries we are looking at. So for me, for example, it was just the US and the UK, but for my friends, it was the US; it was Canada; it was the UK, Singapore, Hong Kong, Australia, and some even tried to balance local universities amongst all these things. So it becomes a very complicated thing. You’re talking to your parents about what they want you to do and money from as early as twelve years old, which is kind of crazy to think about. But from way back then, I had decided that I wanted to study in the US or the UK at one of the great universities there. I didn’t know much about Yale until I came here because I had never been here before. I had been to America once before as a child—my dad took me along to Harvard, Princeton, Stanford, and MIT but we didn’t come to Yale. Funnily enough, it’s the school I love coming to. So, I don’t know how that worked.
Also, I told you I didn’t know much about Yale. So my “why Yale” and also my “why X” college answers would be really indirect because I really didn’t know what I wanted to say. I knew the universities were great, and I knew I wanted to be where the education was the kind that you have in America as opposed to the UK system, which was my other option. The UK was very academically-focused—they looked at your transcript, they tested you on the subject you wanted to study, and if you were lucky, if you were applying to Oxford, Cambridge, or Imperial, they also had an academic interview very different from the American interviews. You sit with actual professors in the subject you want to study—so for me, it was biology, biochemistry. You are interviewed by the professors on the subject. The questions are academic. It’s like a test. It was very different from the US, where they wanted to know about what I liked, my life, what my passions are, what interests I have outside of my academics. That made me want to come to the US more than the UK. Ultimately, it was the flexibility of being able to mix and match, take a bit of the humanities and the sciences, and not have to stick to one thing. Anyways, so my “why Yale”—it literally goes like: “I want to breathe in the atmosphere of the institution.” Full stop, one line. I don’t want to be dishonest—I don’t want to do the cliché. Most international students—we look up the school, look up one thing about the place it’s in, one thing about the professor or the program, a couple of quirky things about the campus culture, and we try to fit that into the “why” college essay. I didn’t know how to put it into the words: “I just wanted to breathe in the atmosphere.” I just want to be there. And that was my “why Yale.”
The Globalist: What moves do you see yourself making, whether physical or not?
Chishti: Short-term, right now, the questions I have been thinking about are moving from Old Campus—I’m on Old Campus, so just moving into my actual residential college, who I will be living in, what our suites are, but that’s really short-term.
Also, we moved homes in Dubai just over winter break. So, when I go back home, I’ll be going to another new home, just continuing this cycle of moving to places. But generally, long-term, I think I will be moving onto another institution. After this, I want to keep pursuing my education until at least a Master’s, or a Doctorate—other schools in the US, maybe for a summer or spring term abroad sometime. It’s just that I’ve always had this itch of moving on after a certain amount of time, and although I love Yale and it’s going well for me, I do think this isn’t where my journey is going to end, education-wise or otherwise. I do think I’ll be moving on after this.
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Jocelyn Chau from Toronto, Canada
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Jocelyn Chau is a first-year in Silliman College from Toronto, Canada.
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The Globalist: What does the word “move” mean to you?
Chau: As a runner, “move” is involved with progressing to a goal, running a certain time. Movement is a work in progress. As a runner, I’ve also had the opportunity to represent my country and move to other places around the world. For example, I went to El Salvador, which was really cool. Finland was also really nice. In Finland, there’s a lot of green space, and people just come and go. It was very much like Canada, I think. Also, the climate was very mild in the summer, which was very nice. And also, the sun didn’t set until late at night, and it was nice to have many hours of sunshine. These opportunities allowed me to see the world in a different light and helped me gain perspective on the world. For example, in the Bahamas, the youth made up a big proportion of the population so it was interesting to see.
The Globalist: How did you move to come to Yale?
Chau: My dad drove me to the airport—took the plane, took a taxi, took another train, came to Yale. Some experiences that gave me the chance to make this move includes my experiences with track and cross-country. As a varsity athlete, you have to demonstrate to the coach beforehand that you can contribute to the team’s success, so having some success in the world of track and field probably helped me get in here.
The Globalist: What moves do you see yourself making, whether physical or not?
Chau: I plan to move back to Canada after graduating because I might eventually want to become a doctor, and it’s easier to get residency if I do my medical school in Canada. After that, I’m open to traveling to other countries. Also, there’s Doctors without Borders, which I’m interested in doing—going to developing countries and helping them develop medical infrastructure.
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Mathew Krick from Connecticut, United States
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Mathew Krick is a first-year in Davenport College from Connecticut, United States.
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The Globalist: What does the word “move” mean to you?
Krick: My definition of the word is pretty much shaped by the fact that I had to move a lot throughout my life. I was born in Costa Rica, then I moved to the United States, then to Mexico, then back to the United States. So, to me, moving represents a transition—not just a physical transition but detaching from one location to accept and adapt to a new location. And with that comes a lot of growth and change, obviously. Moving, to me, means learning to understand the new places you move to and coming to those places with a particularly unique perspective if you’re coming in as an outsider.
The Globalist: How did you move to come to Yale?
Krick: I’ve been living in Connecticut for about four years already. So moving to Yale wasn’t far, right away.
The Globalist: What moves do you see yourself making, whether physical or not?
Krick: I’ve always liked the idea of moving in general. Moving forward, I see myself probably moving to the West Coast, and that’s probably because I’ve moved locations that are very far apart from one another. So, to me, moving far away isn’t an idea that I’m opposed to, necessarily. Also, I’m also interested in moving to find new experiences, meet new people, and experience new cultures and environments.
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Through tracing the narratives of Chishti, Chau, and Krick, we see that movement shapeshifts—different person, new form. And yet, despite the constant metamorphosis of movement, we have captured it in its perpetual threading of the past, present, and future together. Chishti, Chau, and Krick—like many—understand movement as timeless.
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Nicole Zhen is a first-year in Silliman College. You can contact her at nicole.zhen@yale.edu.