The Foreign Service Journal, December 2005

D E C E M B E R 2 0 0 5 / F O R E I G N S E R V I C E J O U R N A L 71 S CHOOLS S UPPLEMENT ly comfortable with both international and American students among my friends.” But he points out that there can be different subcultures of inter- national kids: students from poor backgrounds/countries on full schol- arship, as well as very wealthy interna- tional students whose parents have set them up with luxury cars and apart- ments, and “who are perceived to be snobby.” “I made it a point to hang out with the American kids as well as the inter- national kids,” says Ian Haight, “because I knew that being friends with them would help me adapt to my new life. Talking to my former high school classmates who had also just moved to the U.S. from overseas was important, too, because they were in exactly the same boat I was in.” • Your tolerance and resil- ience will help you in making friends and finding your niche. Foreign Service kids have spent their lives moving to new countries and finding new friends. This adaptability and resilience is one of the many strengths they bring to being college freshmen. “One advantage to being a Foreign Service kid, when adjusting to college in America, is that I already had a lot of experience dealing with new situations, because of this past history with change, and thus made a smooth transition into college life,” says Janey Symington, a junior at Yale University, who arrived there from Niamey, Niger, West Africa, where there were only five students in the entire high school. Ben Harburg says, “In many ways the adjustment to college was the eas- iest move I ever made, because every- one there is new and facing the same thing together, and because I was so well-prepared by our moving around so much during my childhood.” Top Ten Things They Want You to Know… Now that their adjustment to col- lege life in America is behind them, what advice do these TCKs give to Continued on page 72 “In many ways the adjustment to college was the easiest move I ever made, because I was so well-prepared by our moving around during my childhood.” — Ben Harburg