After graduation — when the fanfare dies down and the posts slip out of the algorithm — what’s left for the Class of 2029 is only a countdown. I’m sure that for many, what lies within said countdown is a future of possibilities, learning, and undeniable growth. But for those who live absurdly far from Penn, the countdown is also a stark reminder that we’ll be leaving so many, for who knows how long, and returning who knows when.
For Penn’s international students, this reminder is both prophecy and reality. As part of this unique demographic, we know so much about our own countries and cultures, but we can apply only so little of it in college. For the first few weeks, months, or even years at Penn, we are quite possibly doomed to this constant sense of discomfort: language barriers, an entirely foreign environment, distance to loved ones marked by a day’s worth of flights, and all of this with the quintessential college transition experience as the cherry on top.
I was fortunate enough to have experienced the past few years far from home. I anticipated this discomfort and tried to be one step ahead. I didn’t make an effort to say sappy goodbyes to friends or mentally prepare for “the big day” when I finally arrived at Penn, a place I’ve only ever seen through computer screens or through the pictures my upperclassmen friends tried their best to form in my head. I simply thought, “I’ll see them again, anyways, in a year or two.” But as the days pass by and, as I write this, there are only a few weeks left before the fall semester starts, that “year or two” becomes dizzyingly bleak, and we scramble to tie up everything before we leave and regret every goodbye we did not give.
While trying to think of what exactly I wanted to say in this column, I weirdly recalled the great wildebeest migrations across the Serengeti in Tanzania, and the Maasai Mara national reserve in Kenya. The animals move in a constant cycle, led only by the survival instinct to find grasslands replenished by the rains. Because of them, I can say that yes, leaving is hard; it’s undoubtedly excruciating to be ripped out of our comfort zones and the people we’ve spent our whole lives with. But staying is worse.
This is not to say that we will die by staying and being steadfast, but just like East Africa’s wildebeests, to remain motionless is to wither by not going where the rains fall and the grasses are lush. What we deem to be an extension of comfort instead is, in fact, complacency, something that, with the ambitious character of Penn’s students, must surely be equal to death.
Simply put, we will have a rough journey. We will leave many things behind and miss out on much more. We will feel the loss of all of those things, and no amount of preparation or contingency plans can truly erase that. But moving forward eventually will. In fact, what is discomfort if not the precursor to change?
As international students, what we can sometimes forget is that we carry with us the dreams of so many, and to honor these dreams means we need to grow and do good. And this notion isn’t just limited to those from abroad; in fact, everyone at Penn is subordinate to this. We owe it to all of them — to the families who’ve helped us pack years into little suitcases, to the ride-or-dies whom we tear up at the thought of leaving, and to the ones who were simply there with us in the moments we needed them to be — to make the hard choices and to grow.
What can be consolation to my fellow members of the Class of 2029 is that we make these choices not to substitute the experiences we’ve had with “better” ones, but to supplement the growth we’ve experienced in our homes with those that are uniquely our own.
So may this serve as an affirming letter to the students who risk it all to grow for themselves and for others. The road is long and winding, and the best way to prepare for all of it is to kiss your loved ones goodbye, hope for the best, and prepare for growth unlike any before.
ADY LOTIVIO is a College first year from Bicol, Philippines studying economics and earth and environmental science. His email is jlotivio@sas.upenn.edu.
