I am a foreign student from Beijing, China and coming here to study by myself. Everything seems so unfamiliar to me when I just landed on USA, walked into UMBC campus last year...Graduate study life is stressful, and being alone here is terrible, until I found "PROMISE", everything has changed... By "PROMISE", I get to know lots of friends who are just like me, different backgrounds who are coming from various countries, they are energic and easy-going, so kind to help each other. I can't miss every PROMISE events, why? I'd like to meet these friends, this is a good place to share our feelings and to lighten our study stress. What's more, I learnt a lot from them by exchanging different experience. That's true, "PROMISE" tightly connect us, our graduate life can not live without it!
When talks about "PROMISE" events, PROMISE community Building Retreat @ Rocky Gap on Feb. 2009 is one of them that I can not forget until today. I have a strong feeling like back to my family since I came to USA, we are laughing, playing, learning together. There are no country boundaries there, and if you'd like to have a wonderful world-tour, you can't miss it. My friends which I met in PROMISE Retreat @ Rocky Gap are from US, Canada, Denmark, France, Germany, Japan, Vietnam, South Africa, Greek...etc. of course, myself - China. And more interesting thing is we are also coming from different academic fields, like computer science, mechanic engineerning, history, biology, chemistry, information systems, economics...when we playing cards or games, you will find how fun it is, the brainstorming styles are so various which I had never experienced before.
"PROMISE" is a big part of supplement to our regular graduate study life now, and it is far more than make our graduate life better, I meet my friends there and they had became my lifelong friends whereever I go in the future. "World is becoming flat" by PROMISE!
Thanks and I love PROMISE.
- Peng He
Graduate Student in Information Systems
@UMBC
1 comment:
Peng He, it's remarkable how I can be from Baltimore, MD and you can be from Beijing, China yet share very similar experiences. As a grad student at University of Maryland, everything felt, as you said, unfamiliar. The graduate work was within my capability. However, everything on campus was so unfamiliar that I felt isolated, unsure about my acceptance into the department, and the larger research community in the future. Since very few professors and students were minorities I knew that this strong presence of unfamiliarity and isolation would likely propel into my future career as a professor where there was even fewer minorities. I doubted whether
I even wanted to finish a Masters degree much less a PhD at University of Maryland College Park. It was not until I
got involved with Promise that I started seeing signs of familiarity and began to feel apart of a community and thus
encouraged to continue my studies.
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