Trade-offs as an exchange student

As an exchange student, I think my experience can be valuable both for my classmates who have not lived elsewhere, and for other students who are thinking about coming on exchange sometime.

So, today I want to talk about trade-offs. I remember the first class, when we talked about this, I had to google what it meant (in Chile we speak Spanish as a first language, so I am still learning English words every day). When I read it, it made a lot of sense to me.

When I was in Chile I never thought it would be so difficult to be in the United States. As a fact, we Latinos don't like to call the United States "America", since we feel we are Americans also because we belong to the continent. Maybe because movies, music and culture had sold me "the American dream", so I thought everything would be easy here - almost as if by magic, happiness would come packaged in my plane ticket that would bring me to a developed country.

When I arrived here, I immediately felt the cultural difference. I wanted to greet my roommate with a kiss on the cheek and she looked at me like I was crazy. The food the first few days felt great, but after eating at In-n-Out 3 days in a row I decided that my mom's food definitely tasted better. The same thing happened to me with independence. I gradually discovered that I prefer the closeness and concern of my parents to the loneliness that many students experience here.

                A plate of "pantrucas" a typical Chilean food that my mom cooks all the time in the winter. 

Leaving your whole life, family, friends, pets and everything you knew, including your language, is the biggest trade off I think I will have to face, no doubt. As I explained the other day in class, in Latin culture, family is very important. In Chile children leave home at about 30 years old, so, I still regularly feel like a child who does not know how to take care of herself. On the other hand, my classmates here are often already used to independent life, as some may live alone from the age of 18.

I find this class particularly interesting because I can see the cultural, social and even class differences with my classmates who have lived here all their lives. In Chile I don't think we could have a so-called "first gen" class because probably more than half of us at my university are first gen.

The middle class in Chile is more like what is known here as the "lower income class", even though it is said that we are the "richest" country in Latin America. Furthermore, it is very rare for Chilean students to have a car; here, most of them have a car even in high school. Even when I see how expensive universities are here, I realize that for the middle class in Chile it would be impossible to pay for a university in the United States, comparatively annual tuition in Chile costs around $5000.

Many times I feel strange, I have attended countless talks against racism and discrimination since I arrived here, but I really feel that racism is always present, unconsciously. Although not only here, also in Chile we are racist, many times with immigrants from neighboring countries. However, this time it is different because I had never had to live it myself.

Clearly not everything is bad, I have met wonderful people. Moreover, I have the opportunity to study the strong corporate law course here, which I want to dedicate myself to in Chile. Also, my professors and classmates are very understanding. I have made incredible friends and I have visited places I never thought I would visit. Therefore, I know that this is an opportunity that many of my friends and peers in Chile do not have, so I try to make the most of it.

However, I can't help but miss my home, my people, and my customs. When I feel that I miss them too much, I think about how lucky I am and that, if I took a plane to get here, I have to take advantage of the experience and learn from it. So every day I become more observant and try to make friends who will allow me to get to know new cultures (Latin culture will always have a special and reserved place in my heart). 

My family and I in a church in Peru. Religion is very important in our culture, especially Catholicism which is the most professed religion in Chile.

Bad writer

This first sentence of this blog post is the eighth first sentence I have attempted to write. Up until this point, the most I have gotten through for this blog post is about two paragraphs. It wasn't really because I didn't know what to write. I could talk about the law school experience for hours. I couldn't stick to writing something because everything I kept writing I felt was just bad. 

My writing skills are just one of the many things that have made me feel like an imposter here at King Hall. It is something that has been a sore subject for me. I get too embarrassed to show my writings to someone who could actually help me improve, so I just get stuck in a never-ending cycle of producing poor-quality writings especially for someone who is as "educated" as I am. 

When I was working on my applications to law schools, I had one of my old supervisors take a look at my personal statement. In a previous role, he was the Admissions Director for a graduate school. He asked me to go over his notes of my personal statement in person with him, which was something that I dreaded and tried to come up with a valid excuse to avoid. I couldn't think of anything, so I had to meet with him. When we met, he handed me a copy of my personal statement and there were marks everywhere. There wasn't a sentence on that page and a half that was safe from his pen. I don't remember much from that conversation beyond that he was incredibly helpful and that there was no judgment behind his words. However, I remember feeling embarrassed and disheartened. I felt like maybe I did not belong at a law school because I couldn't even properly write an essay about myself.

Fast forward a couple months, I was impulsively about to submit my law school applications. I remember that it was the week before Thanksgiving, which is significant because it is a couple weeks later than when I was originally planning on submitting the applications. At this point, I just wanted to be done with the application, personal statements, and LSATs preparation. So, at some point in the middle of the night, I just pulled the trigger and submitted everything. 

I do not know what came over me, but the next day during a slow period at work, I decided to go through my application. I'm not really sure why I thought that was a good idea in that moment to review work that I would not really be able to change. I found that my personal statement was littered with tiny errors and typos. I panicked. I spent the next 30 minutes googling what I could do. After that, I called and emailed every school I applied to ask if I could send in an "updated" personal statement. Luckily I was able to send in a new statement with few to no mistakes, hopefully. (I thought it would be best practice not to look at it again after I submitted the statement for the second time). 

As I started law school, I let these little things that many others would not think about, especially years later, define who I am as a law student. Immediately, I gave up on the notion of being anywhere near the top of my class and just assumed that everyone I spoke to was smarter than me. I went to class with that chip on my shoulder. I hated speaking in class because I was sure that everyone else had the same thoughts or that what I would contribute was incredibly incorrect.

Kirsten Weir wrote an article for the American Psychologist Association called Feel Like a Fraud. This article specifically discusses graduate students who are unable "to internalize and accept their success... and attribute their accomplishments to luck rather than ability." To this day, struggle to understand how I made it through so many years of education and to law school being such a terrible writer. Oftentimes, I think there is luck involved because how could I have achieved in an academic setting where writing is such a critical aspect.

However, I think I still have made great strides toward shedding this feeling of imposter. Last week, I was cold-called in class and as I was answering my professor's questions, I could see someone from the corner of my eye shaking her head I was saying an incorrect answer. I think that if this was back in my 1L year, I would not have spoken again for at least a couple semesters. Today, I was able to shrug it off, ignore someone who has an enormous ego, and not let someone I do not know affect me.