What ISAB means to me

As I fly off home and look back at this quarter, ISAB is one of the things I hold the most pride in. Although the 16-hour plane ride makes me incredibly eager to get home, I, oddly enough, hold just as much excitement to get right back to UCSB to continue growing the ISAB program. In my opinion, my experiences with being surrounded by different cultures and ideas gave me a much broader mindset, making me feel like I'm always able to be learning about the world. At the same time, it makes the world seem oddly small, seeing the amount of similarities we share. Especially in terms of a global community, whether it’s all of our differences or the common grounds that are found, I’ve seemed to learn the most not from a textbook, but through that international interaction. That was my incentive to joining the ISAB community, to give myself the tools to be able to make those meaningful connections and give the UCSB community the means of achieving this interaction.

When I came to this school, one of the first things I tried investigating was whether there would be any international students from Dubai. Although this was highly unlikely, I actually had found a few! After immediately gravitating to this small group of people that gave me a sense of home, I moved to a wider spectrum and began clinging to my Lebanese ethnicity through seeking out a Lebanese community. This too, gave me even more of a glimpse of the culture I was missing. Somehow, it wasn’t exactly enough and I felt I needed to keep going, which led me to find an Arab student group. As comforting as it was to have people who knew exactly what I was talking about when I said I was missing a specific traditional dish or aspect of home, it was exactly what I had always known. Whether there were small differences in dialects or cultures across the Arab community, we all had the same radius of knowledge because of our similar upbringings. What I realized I was actually looking for, was something beyond what I knew. I wanted the chance to see what other people think of being international and how UCSB, or American culture in general, differed from their norms, as well as discovering how exactly they were dealing with it.

What ISAB has been to me is still a growing answer, to which I’m not even sure I’ll end with one consensus. Most importantly, to me it’s about being able to grow and learn aside others from all around the world. Offering streams of connection, seeing how things crossover culturally to ultimately offer some sense of guidance in working together. Personally, my goal is to get a deeper understanding of the cultural diversity specifically at UCSB, because I want to be able to provide an atmosphere for international students to make as their own home. The shocks can be daunting, but it takes a certain bravery and interest of knowledge to want to be exposed to new ideas and ways of living. Institutionally, this can be quite difficult, especially when dealing with a public school, as it’s built with a specific culture as the common denominator. What ISAB means to me is creating avenues of international student involvement, making the community open to new traditions. It’s more than just involvement, but rather understanding. It has allowed me to see which communities are present and involved, which avenues of school-life international students want to be a bigger part of, and where there may be discrepancies between local and international students. In a more practical sense, being able to see the avenues of interaction, hopefully will give me the knowledge to help others and guide them in the direction they want to be going. There is no single culture that binds all of us, but in such a globalized world, its the incentive to be exposed and open-minded about other cultures that brings us all together. That is what I want to achieve, not just for myself but for creating an open community that harnesses the value in intercultural interaction.