Moataz comes from Alexandria, a city in Egypt, and lives with his brother in Brooklyn now. He fits the typical international students’ learning style; quiet, never raise a hand, and do not talk to other classmates apart necessary. But, I know that he is helpful, a good listener, showing respect to other classmates when they are saying about their opinions. All in all, he wants to be “a successful business man” in the future.
He always sits beside the door bending his head when taking the notes, and wearing blue sweat pants and black hoodie. So, you would not easily notice him in the class. Since I am also an international student, most of the time we did not catch what each other was saying. So, we spent most of the time just repeating the questions or what we had said. Then, we have the same goal which is able to say fluently in English.
He said he chose the City College of New York because his brother has already enrolled in this school, and so he did not struggle with some problems like most international students have. He only have been in the city around six months, and this is the second semester for him. His brother and he enrolled two classes together in his first semester, and that seemed a lot helpful to him.
His first idea was to join the engineering major, but somehow he is studying the economics now enrolled in the business administration program. I am enrolled in the economics program, so we have talked a lot about the academics. I asked him about the lectures that he had finished in the last semester. He replied those lectures were as great as he expected, and among them he enjoyed the macro economics course the most.
Then, I found out he planed to change the major from economics to accounting because he believes that with a bachelor degree in accounting, which could offer him a stable job after he graduated from the college. He said “every company needs accounts,” and he intend to transfer to Baruch College. Because of the fixed and stable salary, he can save the money, and invest in the future for what he wants to do.
Then, I asked him about the skills that he expects to learn during the college before entering the real world. He told me the main thing he wanted to learn is the knowledge about the economics, but he realized that economics is all about the theory and that does not need skill from the perspective of we understand.
I recognized that we both so want to stand on our own feet without financially support from the family. So, we need skills that can provide us a meaningful job as soon as we graduate. That is why he changed his mind to apply to the Baruch for accounting major. He told me he also desire to be trained for his speech in the public.
Apart from the academics or planning for the future career, he enjoyed movies and anime. He recent favorite movie is “Joker” in which the leading actor won the Academy Oscar for the best actor. He told me about Joaquin Phoenix’s winning speech and he is vegetarian. Then, I asked him why he likes this movie, he said the movie main theme is about the mental illness, and he is interested in it.
He plays soccer and basketball with his brother, and that seems may relieve his homesick, however, when I asked him about that since he enjoys Japanese anime, have he ever think about traveling to travel to Japan. He suddenly smiled and really seemed to thinking about it, then, his answer surprised me.
He responded me “I have never think about it, but, if I ever have a chance to travel, the destination does not matter to me as long as I am with my family.” That is the only time he brought up about his parents, and living with brother does not help him from suffering the homesick less than any other international students.
Since he has not been the city long enough, he has not explored the city yet. The fun fact about him is that even he is from the Egypt, he have never been to the pyramids yet. I do not mean that all people from the Egypt must have a glance from the pyramids.
Because we are both are international students, it is clear that the United States of America is meaning a better life to a certain sense for us, which means we leave our own countries as we do not see hopes in there. We confessed the idea of that we do not want to come back to our own countries.
We wants to focus on the academics and plan for the future career in order to have a place in the society in this city. Therefore, we can have freedom to speak for ourselves, to decide things to do or not to do, independent financially or emotionally form the family, and have the ability to protect ourselves and who we loved from suffering due to the lack of knowledge or information.
In the end, I understand him that the main struggle for us will be how to survive in the city that we have already chosen to do in this way, and I hope he can be what he always want to be one day because everyone needs hope to be stay alive. We throw ourselves in a different country within a different culture, and believes that can bring us a wonderful outcome in our lives.
