Growing up, I never knew I wanted to be a doctor. My talent and passion had always been in writing. On my first day of twelfth grade English class, our first assignment was to write a college essay, list our top colleges, and pick our major. After years of personal struggles and a tumultuous home life, I was at a loss. I never thought college would be on the horizon for me. During this time, I had a discussion with my English teacher about a creative piece I had written for her fiction class. She had told me directly, “I have some good news and some bad news. Writing, English, and a love of fiction is something you will have for the rest of your life. You will never escape it.” It seemed then that the answer was clear: writing would be my career. I began college at City College of New York in the Fall as an English major. From there, I expected it to be a linear path, but as many people say, life doesn't always work out the way you expect it to. Within two months at CCNY, I knew I wasn't being challenged enough, and had fallen into writing solely because I knew it was the one thing I could do well. I wasn't fulfilled in my choice of university or in my studies, so with no plan beyond the knowledge I needed change, I began my transfer applications soon after. The moment I knew I wanted a career in medicine was spent in the pre-surgical unit of Mather Memorial Hospital. While being prepped for a minor procedure, I was placed in a bed next to a woman waiting for an operation on her leg. With nothing but a thin curtain between us, I listened while she had a pre-surgical conversation with the attending anesthesiologist. He went through the normal questions with her, asking about any past medical history, if she had followed pre-surgical instructions, and finally, if she had any questions of her own. It was the next thing she said that changed my life forever: “No, I just want my life back. I want to do the things I used to be able to do. Can you give me my life back?” The anesthesiologist assured her that, yes, they would give her her life back, and it was at that moment I finally knew what I wanted to do. I wanted to be the person who could say that. I wanted to be the person who could give others their lives back. Just as life doesn't always work out linearly, the road to what you want isn't so simple. I transferred to a more academically challenging university and still dealt with the same struggles from before college. My younger siblings still needed help at home, I still needed to deal with my personal battles, and halfway through my academic career, I began helping my partner raise his only daughter, whose mother was not a part of her life. I struggled academically, with the feelings of doubt about my intelligence, and with balancing out all of my familial duties. Just when I felt that maybe I should give up, that maybe this path couldn't be for me, my mother committed suicide. When I received the news, I wish I could say I knew exactly how to feel, whether devastated, confused, or even a sense of relief that her struggle had ended, but I was at a total loss on how to handle the emotions that seemed to change with every passing second. It was usually at this point that I turned to creativity and writing for help, but instead, I turned to medicine. To cope, I suggested to my siblings that we set up a fundraiser for a clinic I had volunteered at in Peru in my mother's honor. Within a week, we had raised enough money for the clinic to receive new lab equipment, and for her sister clinic to renovate a new laboratory. Suddenly, I had my purpose again. In the darkest moment of my life, I found peace in helping others, in the beauty of what science and medicine could do, and in the knowledge that throughout life's challenges, I would have a love of medicine for the rest of my life. I would never escape it. Medicine is numbers, it is facts from a textbook, it is logic, but it also creativity, passion, endurance, and something that I am, and will always be deeply in love with.

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.