On a sunny Saturday morning in Taiwan just days after the spring 2023 semester had ended, I woke up to a friend’s message: “Is Austin okay?”
“Why wouldn’t he be?” I thought. The next thing I remember was staring at his Facebook Messenger profile, my mind blanking out. No, it couldn’t be. I tried to call him. His mom picked up. Her voice alone told the whole story.
I didn’t cry. But a corner of my heart felt empty that summer.
For weeks, I found myself wandering around the HSSC on weekend nights, hoping to find a familiar face I could seek company from. I avoided walking past the JRC corridor, the spot in front of the Grill where he always studied. I remembered the iconic blue Columbia windbreaker he always wore.
He was always there. He always picked up my late night calls. “Senpai, what’s up?” he would say (despite being in the same class year, I was two years older than him). He was always smiling, even when it was an hour before the deadline and he still couldn’t find the bug in his computer science mini project.
For a long time, seeing other international students in their tight-knit cohorts made my heart sink. It was a painful reminder of what I had lost. As an international student, being far away from home is hard. Handling college academics in a foreign language is hard. Navigating a new culture and institution is hard.
On the other hand, having a person from a similar cultural background who speaks the same language is comforting, even though we were both so immersed in English-speaking environments that we couldn’t speak Mandarin or Taiwanese without mingling in some English words. Being able to express myself in my own language felt like finally breathing in fresh air in the HSSC again after being exposed to Grinsmell on the way to my 8 a.m. sociology class.
Austin’s words and presence made me feel understood. With his presence, the stress and complaints of college life didn’t feel as overwhelming anymore.
For a while, I tried to hold myself together. But every day, as the sun set, my world also sunk into boundless darkness. I cried whenever I was alone. Grief flooded in whenever there was no one there to keep it out.
For a good part of the fall semester, I relied on my two best friends to check in on me, making sure that I was not skipping meals or therapy … until they started dating each other. “Oh, well,” I thought, “I guess I can’t bother them for lunch and dinner everyday anymore.”
One night, I sat on my bed, ruminating with my headphones on. A familiar voice filled my ears — it was a song from my favorite singer, IU. “The child who once dreamed beneath countless wishes/Did they bear all that pain/Just to become me?” The lyrics echoed in my mind and my tears accumulated until I felt like I couldn’t hold back my feelings anymore. I realized I needed to find a way out. And I needed to build the way myself.
As the only Taiwanese international student at Grinnell I knew of at the time, I knew I didn’t have any default friend group I could fall back on. Putting myself out there was difficult. Nevertheless, I knew I had to do it. I showed up to a couple of clubs in the middle of the semester, went to events I never imagined myself at, and asked people if I could join them for studying or dinner. It was awkward, but I felt lucky to have made a lot of new friends in unexpected ways.
One of them was David Stanley, the global kitchen culinary coordinator, who supported my idea of hosting a “Beans Around the World” event – despite the fact that I despise beans, and he had fun calling me the “bean queen” for a while. I invited a couple of students to cook and hold a brief presentation on bean dishes from different parts of the world.
Through attending events, I also became friends with people who shared similar struggles. We realized that, at some point, every international student feels disconnected from their surroundings. We all miss home, miss the food and celebrations, miss the comfort of familiarity – and yet, we found a sense of belonging in each other, a reminder that home need not be a place, but people who are willing to understand you. Together, we conceived the idea of starting a club that builds a community for students from underrepresented cohorts — a space where we could share laughter, tears and the pettiest things about our homes.
That was how we brought Rare International Students Everywhere (RISE) to life. As we rushed through preparing all the documents necessary for starting a new student organization, we questioned ourselves numerous times – would people be interested in our club? Would we even get people to help us host events? At that time, a friend told me, “Well, you could either start it now and ditch it later, or ditch it now and regret it later.” So I decided to give it a try. After all, what did I have to lose?
Now, RISE has been operating for almost seven months. I wouldn’t say it was a big success, speaking as a humble East Asian, but I am really proud of what we have achieved. Next time, if you stumble upon a RISE event, come on in! I hope you, too, regardless of who you are and where you’re from, can find a piece of home, just as I was able to.
