The Berlin airport was overwhelmingly crowded when I arrived at noon on a random Wednesday. People rushed past me, some visibly eager to begin well-deserved vacations, others in crisp suits, hurrying to catch flights to their next business meetings. And then there I was: stock-still as I eagerly scanned the crowd, searching for a friend who was supposed to meet me.
My parents, of course, had a hundred other concerns on their minds. Did I really pack my charger? Were my documents in order and readily available? And, perhaps the most pressing question: Was I sure I even wanted to go?
Did I want to go?
It made my head spin. When I received my acceptance letter to Duke, I’d felt no hesitation. I remember that moment vividly: sitting in my university library, surrounded by friends, waist-deep in exam prep for an accounting class, when that particular email reached me. My initial reaction at that time consisted of endless joy, gratefulness and a surreal, floaty fleeing at what was about to happen. I certainly knew that I was going. But had I ever truly considered what leaving my home would entail?
Standing at the airport, excitement, nerves and a bittersweet lingering sadness washed over me. I finally understood. My mental preparation since that email, months of planning out every small yet relevant detail, from which flights to take to scanning the campus map vigorously to visualize my future study routes, did not prepare me for the actual feeling of leaving. The weight of leaving my home, the only home I had truly known for 20 years, finally sank in.
And then I spotted my friend. He looked just as anxious yet simultaneously excited as I was.
Our parents, being parents, immediately huddled together, sharing their feelings of enormous pride, all states of worry, and above all, their vast sorrow over our impending departure. Was it already time to go? I stood next to them, very much dissociating, engulfed in the enormity of it all. Who just randomly decides to leave their old life behind and move to the other side of the world, to a university they have never visited, even never heard of prior to applying, in a country and city they have never been to? It seemed like one of the riskiest decisions I could have ever made at that time.
And yet, I made it.
Arriving at Duke after 11 hours' worth of flights and the accompanying sleep deprivation mixed with exhilaration, I realized my absolute lack of organizational skills. No dollars in hand, no American phone number to call the RA who was supposed to let me in my dorm, and my complete absence of mobile data kept me on my feet until midnight, navigating an entirely new world on my own.
Once I entered my new home, the dorm and the unfamiliar space I would be expected to share with a complete stranger for the next year, everything seemed to align. The uncertainty and planning over the past few months, the logistical chaos of my arrival, and all of my bittersweet goodbyes and lingering sadness that I carried with me to Duke, they all seemed to make sense to me now. For the first time, I seemed to acknowledge: I had made it.
For international students like me, moving across the world to study at a world-renowned, elite university does not solely entail superior academics. There are so many more variables. It is much more about learning to navigate a completely new culture, an entirely new set of social norms that seem so absurd yet normal here, a new educational system, and, after everything, such small yet relevant things like figuring out where to buy groceries or how to introduce yourself to people without feeling completely out of place. It is scary, disorienting and overwhelming at times.
Standing in my vast, empty new room, I finally came to the realization that every Duke student, whether from a small town in North Carolina or a city halfway across the Atlantic Ocean, shares the exact same feeling of stepping into the unknown. As I tirelessly started unpacking my life, stuffed into two ridiculously small suitcases, I understood that this journey was not about leaving my known home. It was about building a new one. And although I felt so distant and different from everyone else in that moment, like I didn’t belong, this was the moment I understood that, in some way, we all did. This is the beginning of my story, a story I share with everyone around me, one that is uncertain, exhilarating, and full of change, but ultimately, it is a story of a new sense of belonging at Duke.
Lisa Maria Stirbu is a Trinity junior on exchange from Berlin.
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