My Background & Decision to Study Abroad
Studying abroad was something that I always wanted to do. I loved travelling and experiencing new things, and because I wanted to do Journalism, I knew that being in Syria wasn’t going to be a good choice, mainly because of the poor educational system for non-STEM fields.
I started working on my application during my senior year of High School, after I got into the Syrian Youth Empowerment (SYE) One-Year Program, a program that allowed me to have what I was missing, and that was guidance. During my time at SYE, I got matched with a mentor who helped me with writing Essays and crafting my entire application. I took the SAT, TOEFL, and Duolingo English Test, and I ended up getting into a decent number of schools, yet Lafayette was the only one that gave me a full-ride.
First Year at Lafayette: Culture, Community, and Making Friends
Relocating to a country that has a very different culture from Syria’s was very stressful at first, yet what made everything easier was the Lafayette International students community and our DSO, as they were deeply invested in making international students feel welcome. Also, the International Students Association (ISA), which I was a part of, did a lot of events to bridge the gap between students from different backgrounds.I personally met my roommate and most of my close friends during the International Orientation Week. And what’s great about Lafayette is that it’s a relatively small school, and that allowed me to meet a lot of people who were genuinely excited about learning about different cultures and backgrounds.
Navigating the New Academic System
Moving from Syria, where I was focused on memorizing the textbooks in order to get a high grade, to a new academic system that relies on understanding was difficult at first, and I definitely took some academic hits my first semester. Even in classes that I had taken in Syria before, I still had a hard time because the way that they were taught in Lafayette is completely different, and it took me almost a year to be able to fully understand the system, yet the Lafayette faculty were very supportive and helpful, and they understood that most of the material was new to me, which helped me a lot during my time there.
I first started out as a film & media major, mainly because Lafayette didn’t have a journalism school. However, it turned out that the film major wasn’t related to journalism at all, and that’s why I decided to switch my major.
I double majored in Economics and International Affairs, and minored in Data Science. Because Lafayette is a small school, there was no standalone Finance or Business major, everything fell under Economics. The major was structured around tracks, each consisting of five classes, and because I was a quantitative research-based person, I gravitated toward courses like behavioral economics and microeconometrics.
For international affairs, it's kind of similar. The way the school does it is that there are core classes, but even within the core classes, students are given choices, and then students choose a region and a concentration. There were six topics and six regions, and students had to fulfill three classes from each one. My core focus was development studies, and I chose it mainly because it overlapped with economics. As for my minor, I mainly minored in Data Science because I had already finished three out of six classes that were required for it, and it also helped me a lot with research, which was a huge part of my time at Lafayette.
Research Opportunities at Lafayette
I personally believe that Lafayette is an overall great school. The culture there emphasizes mentorship and peer support, and its small size makes it much easier to network with professors and access opportunities. Professors are generally open to taking on students for research, and almost all students do research if they are interested in doing so, as the research opportunities are vast and accessible, and students can start as early as their freshman summer.
I first started out with doing History and Government/Law research before moving into Economics research in my junior year, mainly because Research in STEM and Econ-based fields requires prerequisite knowledge.
For my History Research, I focused on French war brides, and my work mainly involved translating and transcribing French documents, as well as reading and giving feedback on books. As for the Government/Law Research, it was qualitative in nature, involved collecting people's names and contact information to send out surveys, and was a larger group effort.
After I fulfilled my prerequisites, I started doing one-on-one Economics research with a professor. My work involved coding in R and data cleaning, merging datasets from 2003 to 2010, and the research skills I built also fed directly into my academic coursework.
Research was personally something that I was very interested in, and that’s why I spent a large amount of my time doing it. That said, it’s a choice of the student at the end of the day, and not all people would like to do research, and that’s completely fine, as Lafayette also helps students with other career opportunities than research.
Internships at Lafayette
During my transition from Film & Media to Economics, I was exploring marketing, and at that same time, Lafayette opened the applications for the externship program, which was a 5-day-long, unpaid program, where we were given the opportunity to do hands-on work with a company. The matching process works by ranking preferred companies and then getting paired based on your profile. I got paired with Novita, a PR agency in New York that happened to have a large number of Lafayette alumni. My tasks included categorizing data, organizing physical magazines, and Canva work.
I made sure to stay in touch with my supervisor, and by the end of the externship, I asked if I could continue working with them as an intern, and they said yes. It was a two-month hybrid internship, where I was placed on a different team working on blurbs - promotional copy for magazine features, as well as doing idea comparisons. The team was highly supportive, and they offered to connect me to teams in different sectors when I expressed interest in a different field. I really enjoyed my time at the company, yet I didn’t like the work itself, and that’s why I decided not to return.
A Semester in France
During the spring semester of my junior year, I was accepted into the IES study abroad program, which was an external program where I got the chance to study for a full semester in Paris, while doing an internship. My classes that semester were related directly to my major, specifically to politics in Europe, and French contemporary politics. Part of the IES program was an internship class that we had to take, where IES sent my resume to potential hosts, and I got matched with a French woman who builds and sells startups. By the time I joined, she was building a new startup, and my work included meeting once a week to discuss the startup idea, market research, and review analysis. One of the things that made me stand out was that I was bilingual, which helped me explore different markets and cultural differences in consumer expectations.
The Job Hunt After Graduating
Navigating the job market as an international student after graduating was incredibly difficult, and I was unemployed for a long period of time. Unlike my American friends, I wasn’t able to work in jobs that are unrelated to my major, as international students on OPT can only work in fields related to their major, and many companies were hesitant to hire OPT holders because of visa uncertainty, especially given the political climate around Syrian nationals. That made me face a double difficulty, as the job market was already bad, and I had the visa-related issues on top of that. A while after applying to many jobs, I got accepted as a Research Specialist at AppleCart, which is a targeted marketing company. My role involves gathering information on people to be targeted in specific media campaigns. My professors also helped me a lot because I put them as my references, and they were highly responsive. Generally, my journey at Lafayette helped me a lot with getting my current job. Whether through the actual research experiences that I had there, or my great professors. It all worked out eventually, and Lafayette was a huge part of making that happen.
Advice to My 17-Year-Old Self
The biggest piece of advice I would give my 17-year-old self would be to take a breath. I was extremely anxious during the application process. I believe that my anxiety made me perform worse, and less pressure would’ve allowed me to have better results. I don’t believe in “meant to be”, but I do believe that things will work out the way they’re supposed to with enough personal effort. You will find your people, you will find your place, and it will be fine, just stress less.
