When I left my home country, it was by choice. For many of my peers, it’s not a choice. Some peers take leaving as a luxury.

Leaving the country you grew up in, the country where you received formative lessons and experiences, the country where you have family and friends, and many more memories in is not easy. Whether you leave due to war, internal conflicts, socio-political or economic matters — leaving is easier said than done.

There are Reddit forums and how-to guides to help people, especially from wealthier, “western” nations, leave their homes hoping for a better lifestyle. They’ll join Facebook groups to have “expat” meet-ups to create a mini-fusion of their new home and their old home. There’s more support for the folks who pursue this route.

I didn’t have any of that. I was alone.

When I left my home country to receive an education in a field not offered anywhere on my home continent, I was scared but excited. It was a choice to leave. Pursuing my passion with financial support in a supportive environment was a choice. Even if my undergraduate advisor told me to pursue personal plans first, I knew that a thing viewed as a roadblock due to social norms would not stop me. I wanted to contribute to the betterment of my society. I didn’t want to contribute to burden-building by becoming a part of a statistic that could lead to my education becoming a waste of time.

However, it was grueling. I loved learning languages, just not this new one. Learning the native language of a country I didn’t know was mind-numbingly difficult. It had so much in common with my other languages. My head and heart said “no” in union. My academic advisors wanted me to stay in the country because my niche field is needed. Even after over 500 applications, not a single interview offer came back. So, I got my degree and returned to my home country to pursue my back-up career that I had so carefully planned for every step of the way.

Then, I pursued another degree, this time in my backup field. Although I’m almost done with this degree, I got a job offer to a country half-way around the world.

So, I said yes. Although I had never visited this place before and couldn’t speak their language, my skills were needed. Maybe this time would go better than the last time living abroad.

I left alone, bringing only what I could bring on the plane for free. I arrived in my new apartment, which was bare and had only white walls.

The start was rough. I was new. I didn’t know much at all.

So, I asked questions. I made friends. I created connections with my region that went beyond my neighborhood.

A few years later, in many ways, my hard work has bloomed into a beautiful rose garden of many colors and varieties of roses.

When Leaving Doesn’t Go Right — A Colleague’s Blunder

Even if my language skills were (and still are) not the best, I remain as culturally considerate as possible. When a new colleague came into my area, they brought their spouse. Both of them, with no connection to this country, came and met me for the first time, they tried to upend me with their dramatic story and belief that they could assimilate just as easy, if not better and faster than I had. Their questions — hasty, impatient, condescending, and mocking in tone, set them up for failure.

One of their questions threw me off guard —

Why aren’t you fully fluent in the language yet? When are you going to be fully fluent?

There’s a difference between preparing before you leave and receiving a short-window offer requiring a busy and frantic packing of your personal things and uprooting of your life. I was the latter. They were the former. I never received language classes because of my harsh environment. They received language classes and pampering before their departure. I was alone. They were together.

However, neither one was trained in the job, with one partner staying at home. I was trained for this job, in my backup field. I had spent hundreds of hours preparing for my first field to fail, so I pursued this second field as a stable alternative. I had graduate education and publications under my belt. They only had an undergraduate education, with a superiority complex that surpassed my ego’s limits. This colleague’s workplace would call me asking and begging why they had been given such an underqualified, yet older colleague to deal with. They wanted me to fire this colleague, although I was senior to them and had no say in their employment status.

Lo-and-behold, they left. They left before the working partner’s contract ended.

The splinters caused by the lack of preparation for the culture and the job was a bigger test than anything else. Their superiority complex as noted by other colleagues, turned them into hated community outcasts.

Who would want to be a friend with someone who says they’ve already learned what the world has to offer?

That’s why living abroad has many failure and success stories. Always take time to learn from failure to reach success.

Thank you for reading my stories and (not so brief) rant.

For nearly 5 years, I’ve been a graduate student. Although that journey is about to end, so I can gain more experience to decide what will come next, I’ve experienced a significant shift throughout my educational experience. Of course, I’m writing this amid chronic procrastination on papers, projects, and research that have me stuck in a corner. However, these thoughts are bogging my progress, since my research concerns these implications.

During high school and my undergraduate career, my peers were so focused on websites that would detect plagiarism. Some of my instructors carefully compared our papers to our present and past peers. I remember waking up at 3 AM in my junior year to scramble to write a history and then an English literature paper about similar topics. My brain was fried from high school writing. It came back alive during my first semester of my undergraduate career, a hot summer semester filled with frantic writing by pen in a small notebook. I would take it to an air-conditioned computer lab at 5 AM, before the food court would open.

Writing during my undergrad was good, honest work. My effort came to fruition after years of being belittled for not being the perfect, model student in middle and high school. It allowed me to have fruitful conversations with instructors, and my primary and secondary school teachers told me that theoretically speaking, they would reject me.

During my second year of undergrad, a friend had to go to academic court. They accidentally submitted their notes in a class required for their degree, not her paper. Although they explained their life situation to the professor, they still had to be reprimanded. The basics of a paper were there, but they were not sufficient.

They were penalized. Their GPA dropped dramatically. They lost their passion.

The lack of leniency and empathy between instructors and students has influenced my vision of being a student and educator. However, educator opinions are shifting.

During my graduate experience, it was initially encouraged to use grammar checking tools. Then, generative AI came to write abstracts for red-eyed graduate students balancing their families, work, and studies on top of life. Some of my colleagues used AI to write their papers. So, my instructors lost their marbles, even on the students who struggled for hours to create precise wording for their thesis statements while doing laundry and making meals.

How can I even finish my thesis if the words I write and type are magically generated by AI tools I have never used before? Do I need to screen record my mind-numbingly boring writing process, which is filled with highlights, gaps, and self-deprecating comments?

Although I have academic competency in English, I’m concerned for my peers. If many AI generators utilize structures commonly used by ESL and EFL learners, should they be penalized for not being brought up in an English environment?

For the younger students, my peers teach at other schools, should they be penalized for copying wording from AI? Should they face consequences for learning overly structured versions of basic communication in a language that their home country rarely speaks?

As I continue writing my second graduate thesis, I am only left with questions. There is one more question I will leave as a testament to my increasing academic anxiety.

Will my thesis be flagged as AI after hundreds of hours of research and tears over books, papers, and my laptop?

The future will decide my fate.

Where have I been and why?

Teaching and finishing a graduate degree are tests beyond my sanity. I’m an exhausted graduate student teaching at a struggling secondary school in the middle of the countryside, staying geographically and mentally detached. Even for the passionate, imagine running a marathon, where another weight is placed on your back every kilometer. Although you’re running closer to the finish line, every stride makes it feel further and further away. I’m so close to graduating yet so far from finishing.

Why the title?

The more I learn, the more stupid I feel. I’ve written two and a half abstracts out of five. I have papers finished, and I should send them to a publisher, yet I know they’ll be utterly rejected. The academic pipeline is purposely restrictive. If you know the folks in the “in crowd,” perhaps you’ll find yourself at a grand dining table of knowledge, far from reality. As a member of the “out crowd,” I feel like I’m facing a big ivory tower. My words are twisted together making a ragged rope. Alongside many others, we’re throwing our ropes, hoping to catch a corner of the tower, to no avail.

Why haven’t you spoken much to your friends?

Have you ever wanted a cheerleader in your life? Have you ever felt like you wanted someone to listen to you? Relationships are two-way streets. If I keep providing to others, basically providing as an emotional support umbrella, then why should my ears hear an apathetic response when I have a problem? When my place was flooding, a “friend” wanted to discuss their problems with a newish partner. However, they were repeating the exact words from the day before. Often, silence is the best medicine for folks that provide little support.

Why are you even working with academia in this environment?

Perhaps I want a better job, or maybe I want to meet the immigration requirements of the country I’ve spent several years working in. Maybe my intellectual curiosity kills other components of my life that would bring me down. I care little about titles; I care more about the place. I just want to be appreciated.

What are you even trying to be?

I don’t know. Anything but a burnout graduate student who can’t teach. Anything but unproductive.

Have you ever forgotten why you got into something?

Maybe you felt that all your work was in vain?

That’s the classic case of writer’s block, perhaps falling out of love with your craft.

My relationship with writing is more turbulent than a flight over the Atlantic. It’s my most volatile relationship.

I fell in love with writing in 2015. I fell out of love in 2016, forced myself to write in 2017, and went straight into more technical, less enjoyable writing in 2018.

For nine years, I wrote about other folks. I became banal. I had a specific formula for everything. Although I received acclaim and accolades, my ethos was gone. Everything about me disappeared.

For six years, I’ve dedicated myself to refining my writing. However, I lost the essence, the soul of my writing spirit. I become a shell of myself.

It took some stagnation and challenging strides to move, start from a new foundation, quit former obligations, and search for sensible stability.

Unlike a bad cold, there is no official recovery from writer’s block. However, what if the reverse happens?

The itch.

The overwhelming infatuation with the sound, flow, and rhythm of words. The desire to investigate the unknown. There was a need to grab a pen and write until the sun came up. It’s why I didn’t sleep last night.

“Practice what you preach” is a time-old phrase. However, I preached without practicing writing. Then, I fell back in love. It came back.

It is all thanks to my pre-university students. They made words fun. They reminded me of how to write, how to write, and they told me my voice was drowning. They were my lifeguards.

My voice was revived. Words flew from my mouth and mind like a bird leaving a tree branch in the early morning. My hand wouldn’t stop moving.

Today, I returned words to my students. Cards for graduation. Ten sentences per graduating student. Over 1000 sentences total.

My heart hurts, my eyes are wet, my soul is weary, yet my words are alive.

Thank my students for reverse writer’s block.

My heart and head hurt, though.

The definition of a “neighbor” is contested in my home region.

The person living next to me may conventionally be my actual geographical neighbor, yet they might be very far away socially. We’re weird with time and distance. Let’s measure our journey by time, not by distance or any other measurement.

If I live on a small island, the next island will often be called my neighbors. It is the same with small mountain towns, even if my closest physical neighbors are 45 minutes away. We all go through the same challenges — we can commiserate together.

That same rule applies in my current workplace. Even for colleagues in a different staff room, we’re all still neighbors in a way.

Perhaps it’s a few acquaintances who are scattered across a few different time zones. We have our differences. Somehow, we stay in touch.

So, socio-spatiality is one way.

Maybe, in another way, it’s even some of my distant blood relatives. The ones that I’ll do the “nod of acknowledgment” followed by some awkward catch-up. Yes, that’s happened before.

If we want to talk about physical next-door neighbors, that might be the most straightforward example.

Contemplating Neighbors, Communities, and Belonging: Background

Aside from philosophical questions such as, “What is a neighbor?” there’s much to ponder about neighbors and communities.

In the major Abrahamic religions, a range of perspectives are included, from Judaism to Christianity to Islam. These religious aspects establish that we can never get away from a sense of neighborliness, and it’s an innate part of life. Despite this, I will not make a case about my perspectives of religion; instead, a perspective on neighbors is more suitable.

Only by examining religious aspects can communities of different religions establish this concept. The book Sacred and Secular by Pippa Norris and Ronald Inglehart demonstrates that religions and communities are linked. After analyzing several factors, they say, “… we can only conclude that belonging to religious organizations does indeed go together with community engagement and democratic participation, as social capital theory suggests…” (Norris and Inglehart 2011, 192). Religiosity goes together with socio-political involvement, two aspects of a democratic society, intertwining two societally active concepts. In essence, there is a sense of belonging to a group. However, what is social capital theory?

Social capital theory has several definitions and applications. However, one fits the context of neighbors, communities, and religions. The theory is presented best in the book Bowling Alone by Robert D. Putnam. Putnam says, “Social capital refers to connections among individuals — social networks and the norms of reciprocity and trustworthiness that arise from them,” resulting in an invisible network of links and (dis)connectivity (Putnam 2000, 19). In depictions of Western media, there are often dramatized versions of connectivity. One example gone wrong includes the romanticized perspective of 1950s American neighborhoods turning into an antisocial, affluenza-embedded concrete, fake grass Suburban wasteland (Putnam 2000, 210–211). Aside from neighborhoods, it’s present in post-industrial educational systems and more extensive socio-political connections.

As a political scientist hiding in the classrooms of a foreign country, I often examine the idea of social capital in my school and transplanted community. Different countries, nations, cultures, and societies have their imaginations and realities of neighbors and communities. Often, I find myself scrambling for my notebook or phone to jot down quotes, interactions, or ideas from students, colleagues, and society. It’s a daily workout in itself.

Nevertheless, I asked one class of my students if they felt they were a part of a community. The whole class of 40 said yes. However, I asked if they thought the “city” where we all lived was good. Que only five hands being raised.

Despite living in a seemingly safe place (safest in the region, according to the police), there’s much to improve. Local transport isn’t the most convenient; it’s car-dependent (despite the country being world-renowned for unique transport), there is a lack of places to shop, and everything closes early. We must be a model community for brain drain. I’m sadly not joking.

After, I asked my students if they had good neighbors. Everyone said yes. One student asked for some stories about my neighbors. These three stories are for my students. I’ll read them to my classes when I can. Thanks to my smart students, they’re all stars to me.

Pardon my reflective research and thoughts. It’s my way of better understanding my surroundings, even if using autoethnography makes me sound like an in-house pseudo-intellectual, j’suis encore là. The imposter syndrome persists!

Call Me, Even When It’s 3: First Observations

When I was in my early teens, my neighbor was pregnant. She had a few little ones, and her husband had a mandatory business trip. However, despite extensive negotiations, he had no paternity leave and had to go on the trip.

My neighbor was nervous about her husband leaving extremely close to her due date. It wasn’t her first, yet she feared her first birth alone. So, my parents offered her some help and company. She could call us whenever her labor started. We’d be able to help.

Of course, that help came at 3 in the morning. We all awoke to the house landline going off. We knew it. Our neighbor needed us. Hence, my parents knew what to do. This wasn’t their first time, either. They knew the local hospital well and the shortest way without getting pulled over.

They made it in good time: healthy delivery, healthy momma, healthy baby.

My parents set a damn good example.

Food For The Brokenhearted: Second Observations

A few years later, everyone who was old seemed to drop like flies in my family.

Both sides of my family lost some invaluable folks. My heart can still feel the loss as if it’s yesterday. It’s been over five years, and it still hurts. Grief hits you when you least expect it.

Amid all the loss, add some sickness, university admissions, accidents, and other mishaps. I still don’t know how my head stayed on.

After one of the major losses, a family friend knew we weren’t eating. If we eat when upset, then we become sick. Add sickness of the stomach to sickness of the heart and mind. Grief hits us hard.

This family friend took a trip out of their way with a Leaning Tower of Pisa worth of Tupperware boxes. They knew everything that could be weak was weak.

We all tried to refuse. They insisted.

So, a neighbor saw our need and filled our stomachs and hearts.

We’ll always be more than grateful.

For Things Worse Than A Cold: Third Observations

Since moving to a country I had never visited prior, adjusting has been rough.

Different social customs and norms have made my mind spin like a helicopter. Half of the time, I don’t think. I cross my fingers and hope I’m doing what’s right.

In my first month, I became more acquainted with my neighbors.

Except the one to my right. That neighbor, I never saw before.

It became weird until the 2-month mark, precisely to the day.

Then, I saw the neighbor.

Leaving to my work, I was about to lock my door until I heard the click of a door opening.

I felt the instinctual urge to return to my place and wait for this neighbor to leave. However, I was late to work. Plus, I had a few stops to do. Time was short. Time was money, and I had no money. So, I braved this strange, mysterious neighbor’s appearance.

Lo-and-behold, it was a coworker. In my same department. Who I teach with.

Mamma mia. Mon dieu. I was not prepared.

They knew me. I knew them.

I knew they liked me. An exotic person in a foreign land.

They didn’t know that they scared me. A person with customs I was puzzled by.

So, we exchanged pleasantries.

It’s been a year, and it’s been the same.

Exchange greetings, small talk, and maybe complain about our loud neighbors.

A few months ago, I could tell that they needed me.

At work, they looked sick. They went back to their place early. Their test came back positive for a specific illness.

I messaged this coworker over our work messaging system. They lived at work basically, so they had no food or other necessities at home.

No worries, I’m the parent-friend and knew what they needed.

Drug store? Yup. Convenience store? Yup. Snacks and soups? Of course. Vegetables and fruits, too, I couldn’t let them eat poorly.

Five bags were wrapped together as two bags with a note on top. I rang their doorbell, ensured they got the food, and immediately told my supervisors. My colleague wasn’t going to starve. They were going to be perfectly okay.

The next day, I felt like a ruler of a kingdom. There was no added power, only some extra attention.

In my eyes, it solidified my role in my workplace beyond being the mystical foreigner. It was like being the goalie after a dramatic game, serving as the glue on my team.

I still care about this neighbor. Even on the bad days.

I’m Always There: Final Personal Reflections

Sometimes, I know I’m not the best neighbor. I know I don’t have the best neighbors either. However, we all try to be greater community players.

Despite being contradictory and hypocritical, I know my roles and place. Some of which I purposely go against due to their antiquated standards and notions. For others, I know that a sense of community is constantly needed. Wherever I roam, I can be a good neighbor, even if my neighbors are having a disco. Someday, I might join in if they play some ABBA.

For now, a “parent-like” neighbor never hurts on a freezing day.

Soup, coffee, or tea, anyone?

Sources

Norris, Pippa, and Ronald Inglehart. Sacred and secular: Religion and politics worldwide. Cambridge University Press, 2011.

Putnam, Robert D. Bowling alone: The collapse and revival of American community. Simon and Schuster, 2000.

My article was originally published on my WordPress.

If you’re in a food-induced coma, it’s tricky to suddenly grab your wallet to the nearest place with a line longer than the Nile.

You may be waiting for Cyber Monday.

Or, you’re me.

Black Friday is great for some folks.

But not this bargain shopper and very critical wallet watcher.

I remember being in an American high school and talking with classmates before Thanksgiving. Most wanted to go to the largest mall in the state capital. Some would rush out of Thanksgiving dinner to line up for new games and cheaper video game consoles.

I felt left out. I wanted to join them. I wanted new games, too — until I looked at my wallet.

I could go to McDonald’s for coffee and apple pie. While watching my friends freeze until the doors to retail extravaganza opened.

Instead, I had other ideas. It continued into college, my weird way of shopping.

Black Friday became Calm Friday. Anything that needs to be exchanged? Perfect timing. Exchanging a smaller Keurig for a bigger one worked very well. There were no lines at some of the weekend’s busiest shops.

Grocery shopping became a breeze. I’ll happily take more bang for my buck. Going to smaller department stores worked well. They had “mini-Black Friday” sales, yet nothing special.

When my friends came back boasting about what they spent money on and for how much, I was content with what I had saved.

My senior year of high school was different. The maze of college applications made some folks look at their wallets, asking, “Well, what now?” as I pretended not to eavesdrop.

It hasn’t changed much for me.

Even living abroad, some friends are shopping until they drop.

Before 2010, I didn’t notice many Black Friday sales outside North America. Explaining Black Friday to non-North American friends and family was a challenge. Some just shrugged their heads and gave up trying to understand why our dollars would be spent so fast, as if we were throwing money out of a fast car’s windows. It’s a ritual embedded into the psyche of American shoppers. It’s spreading, too.

Since 2010, I’ve noticed more Black Friday materials in Western Europe and East Asia. Yet, Cyber Monday remains supreme among gamers.

Recently, some of my students casually asked me about Black Friday.

Especially why their parents never did it while growing up.

It took a lot of explaining and conceptualizing change. They haven’t connected the dots about my career yet.

In short, we talked about globalization, connectivity, and capitalism.

Even for Japan, the post-WWII era has been full of navigating foreign influences and what should or shouldn’t be accepted. This evolution has some of my colleagues saying, “I saw this when I was little — it must be Japanese!” when it’s not.

Black Friday is another one of those trends.

It might get my attention with flashy headlines. It’s tempting not to buy some cute headphones that my students will faun over.

Black Friday won’t have my money this year.

This is especially true when I’m snuggled up in bed with a warm cup of coffee.

It’s time to snooze, anyway.

Thanksgiving Eve. It’s another anniversary away from family.

Yet, why is this necessary?

There are too many reasons.

Money. Opportunities. Finding a place to live. My field. A better shot at success. A rare opportunity presented.

That’s at the top of the Christmas tree. The 2D Christmas tree of sticky notes on my wall might make me smile once in the next month.

However, a Thanksgiving alone and abroad isn’t so scary after a while.

I have family members. They’re far away.

We don’t need turkey to celebrate Thanksgiving. I can make a few staple dishes before I tuck myself in.

I don’t always have to be on the phone calling folks. I need peace.

The greatest gift to give thanks for will be the lack of noise. Lack of chaos or frantically flipping through channels with a growling stomach. Or the converse. Barely finding anything with a room full of folks with food hangovers.

These reminders make me not miss much at all.

During my first semester of university, on a hot July day, my writing professor advised us not to go home. Our enemies to growth were in the places where we had set behaviors. So, no home for a while. When I returned home, I returned to everything I had done before.

It took a few more semesters of college, going abroad, and keeping away to keep growing.

But when are you coming back home?

Currently, I’m still growing. I have to stay away. I haven’t learned enough.

I’ve had my victories and failures since I’ve been abroad. There are more failures for now.

It’s just my current Thanksgiving. A year full of failures and heartbreak alone.

Leaving the people I consider home became a necessity. Although there are many circumstances I haven’t written — I had every reason not to go.

It was needed, though.

This Thanksgiving, I give thanks for leaving my home country and not seeing the people and places I call home. It’s necessary to grow and learn.

Happy Thanksgiving, especially for a day of reflection and critical lenses. Perhaps, for a bowl of dirty rice, too.

Expat. Foreigner. Immigrant. Migrant. Alien.

All of these terms are found in English-speaking media. The emotions associated with each word are where the differences lie. If I go on Facebook, I can find many “expat” groups in my country. However, my colleagues will call me a foreigner. The government of the country I live in will call me an immigrant. The reason why I’m here is because of my work.

When I asked my coworkers, “Do you see me as an immigrant?” they all said no. Everyone said I was a foreigner. When I asked my friends if I was a “migrant” due to my reasons for taking work, everyone said I was an “expat,” without a doubt.

Different countries have different reasons for these terms.

In Japan, where I work and live, there are many different perceptions of each label in Japanese. Many foreign residents believe the label “gaijin” (外人) is often inappropriate, primarily due to its usage. So, I’m the politer, “gaikokujin” (外国人) or foreigner. I am indifferent to either usage.

In other countries where I’ve studied and worked, there’s a strong connection with labels and pointing, especially for groups deemed as nuisances.

In the Netherlands, Morrocans, Turkish folks, Roma, and other groups often bear the brunt of the name-calling, racism-fueled burden. If my skin looks light and I make my features look as European as possible, perhaps I’ll be fine.

In 2020, I was on a train in the eastern part of the Netherlands. I started having an allergy attack, and it was an emergency where I had to take medicine. The train bathroom doors were locked entirely. The closest stop was far away. So, I had to take out my emergency medicine and water. No one was on the train except for me.

Unfortunately, it was as soon as a conductor saw me sipping on water, and I miraculously swallowed the pills. He decided to scream-lecture at me in a thick Twents accent for 10 minutes about selfish Dutch women. Nogmaals, in het Twents.

Dutch women?

Myself?

Short little me? I finally passed as a Dutch woman? Dat is klopt? Dit is zekker?

What a day to be alive.

That was the first time in my adult life that a European finally called me a European. I felt like I had won the lottery. Hallelujah. They can’t tell what my ethnic identity is. Thank goodness.

My peers would often remind me that I would never be Dutch. They would pigeonhole me into the nationality on my passport. Surprisingly, not by my last name.

It often hurt that I wouldn’t be a part of this crowd.

However, the labels that my peers, typically from the Netherlands and Germany, put on me were a representation of themselves.

They had never left Europe. They had never had friends with folks from outside their culture. Plus, they felt uncomfortable with things they couldn’t put labels on, aka me.

I was both a part of Europe while being a part of outside of Europe at the same time.

Like this clip, I was torn, as excellently portrayed in Selena.

I faced the same in North America.

That was until a work opportunity came to fruition to move to Japan.

Even if my colleagues think foreigners are difficult, I don’t face pigeonholing.

I’m a proud person from another land.