Raheal Boadi-Yeboah
Mount Holyoke College

It is most parents' and most children's desire to climb high up the educational ladder. However, as much as the different rungs of this ladder are esteemed, the college rung is often visualized as the watershed: the defining moment for a teenager to temporarily break away from home and family and immerse oneself into a whole new world characterized by uncertainty, fear, and even enthusiasm. As an international student hailing from Ghana, this transition has been even more stark and defining for me, but I value these experiences in that they have properly molded the way I think, behave, and feel now about the whole college experience.

As 31st August 2007 drew nigh, I found myself thrown into an ambivalent feeling of anxiety and fear. That is, as much I was eager to officially brand myself as a college student, I was evidently poignant because I was leaving behind family, friends, and loved ones I would not be able to see on a regular basis. Even worse, I was traveling alone--well, maybe not alone because I later turned my fur-embroidered handbag into my companion, gripping it tightly onto my chest, zipping and unzipping it from time to time, turning it into a sleeping bag at the Milan airport where I transited, and rubbing its delicate material to expel my lonely self from boredom. It definitely wasn't an 'all-enjoyable' trip. Though this was a somewhat painful aspect, I soon got over it, but unfortunately experienced something even more aching.

When I finally arrived at my college dorm in Massachusetts, I unloaded my baggage and exasperatingly wheeled it over to my designated room on the fourth floor of South Rockefeller Hall. For some incomprehensible reason, I was filled with both joy and exuberance. However, soon after my aunt who had met me, warmly gave her goodbye regards, and I found a hitch in my initial state: I was now even sadder than ever and the only thoughts that ran through my head were: 'How am I going to make friends? Oh no, in fact where are the people? I can't see anyone on campus.' I lived with these feelings the whole night and beyond, till I finally started easing up. Fortunately, I got over that morose feeling and settled down well.

However, these challenges still pop up from time to time. But as a student coming from a totally different cultural and social background, I have come to value, even more, the privilege of living together with other people, respecting their differences, tolerating their cultural practices, and avoiding the tendency to be ethnocentric. I have made a simple deduction from the way I managed to overcome all these fears and uncertainty: If I had the heart to stand against the cloud of qualm and apprehension which engulfed me, then I even have more heart now to face any problem. This is the principal value that I now live by and it has been, and still is, and definitely will be helpful in shaping my academic and social structure here in Mount Holyoke College.

All in all, the solitude was aching; the uncertainty was daunting; the experience was a tough hit, but I am highly indebted to God for the mercy and love, to my family for the support and encouragement and to my new Mount Holyoke friends and professors for their love and encouragement. It is these experiences that have erased the fearful moments of traveling here alone, facilitated the transition, and made the experience worth sharing.