Why did we become Trinity Tigers?!

As I talked in my last blog entry that most of us international students come to this amazing campus from places across the world. Currently there are about 71 countries represented on the campus with the international students making up almost 11% of the Trinity population. This enables Trinity to be one of the most diverse liberal arts colleges in the US today. The costs of attending such a fine institution even after receiving financial aid and scholarships is very high for an international student since the currency transfer rates are usually pretty skewed when compared with the US dollar. And apart from the financial situation, we- the international students leave our homes, families and friends and come to this foreign land to spend few of the most formative years of our lives. So then what is it that helps us make this choice of undertaking this journey to come to the US when the stakes seem to be so high?

It is the education system of US. Please see the video below to get a sense of the education system that exists in most other countries (here India is displayed since I am from India) at the undergraduate and graduate levels which pushes students to leave their own countries and come to the US. The curriculum and the colleges here foster critical thinking and questioning assumptions. Break-through researches and state-of-art infrastructure that makes you believe in the impossible is what the US gives us. The flexibility and the freedom to almost create our own majors and to do research at an undergraduate level in universities like Trinity make us believe in our potential. The discussions and the lectures by the professors, most of who are the best scholars of their own fields gives us the assurance that we aren’t being cheated in intellectual property. And above all, our enthusiasm and perseverance for the subject we are studying matters the most to the professors. The international students come here to experience this liberation, we come here to experience this enrichment of our knowledge and we come here to experience this growth of our abilities that we can create better lives for our countrymen upon our return.

In many ways, the international students towards the end of their careers at Trinity become not only Trinity Tigers, but International Trinity Tigers who are Trinity’s international face!!