Raised up in an educated, focused, and hard-working Indian family, I had been taught since I was very young that nothing is ever difficult, and that hard work can help you achieve anything you ever wanted to.

When I came to the U.S. as an international student last year, I faced the first ever shock of real life. I suddenly felt weaned away from my loved ones: my old school friends, my inspiring school teachers, and my always-supportive parents and family. College was an entirely different place, and even a different country for me, so trying to settle in was a process imbued by pain and tears.

However, I feel like I always had a 'fighter spirit' within me. It's like I always fear failure, but when I am met with it, I don't immediately cry over it. The very first instinct for me in handling this failure is to say, 'I will fight it. I will do better next time.'

So, in my first year, I had nothing to fight except my homesickness, as well as cultural shock. And I would say that I handled it pretty well, because I was lucky to have a few very good friends in college. Academics for me in the first year were very easy to handle. However, my life didn't remain so easy all along. Because during my sophomore year, one of my greatest support systems, one of my best friends, moved off-campus. I had spent all of my time in college with her. From studying, to eating in the cafe, we were always together.

When my friend moved off-campus, I was still very strong. This was because I had come charged up with enthusiasm from my summer break in India. I decided to just focus on the increased academic load I had during the semester and keep busy. Luckily, this did help me, because I became more self-reliant and learnt to take my own decisions.

By the end of the fall semester of my sophomore year, I realized that I had been so busy that I never had any time for emotions. My social life was almost zero because I had just one or two friends, but we never got enough time to spend with each other. Then, I went to New Jersey over the winter break and trust me, it was the most emotionally rejuvenating time of my life. I had my cousins with me, who had come all the way from India, and I loved the family time I spent with my relatives for about a month.

Then, it was time for a reality check once again. I had to come back to Worcester for my spring semester. When I was travelling to Worcester from New Jersey, I was crying the entire time. For about two weeks, I missed my family immensely. The only thing that had charged me up was an internship I was accepted into. Being an international student, I had taken up a lot of pain to get my documentation approved for the internship to be finalized. But after three weeks of working hard on the internship and declining all other on-campus job interviews and internship opportunities, the internship, due to some bureaucratic cliche, didn't work out.

This was the so-called 'falling point' for me. I was just so frustrated and tired after this event. My academics, that had never before been affected by anything else, suffered a bit but luckily not a lot after this discouraging incident. I kept on applying to other places and even tried to enroll for useful summer certificate courses, but nothing worked out at all.

I have almost started hating the tag of an 'international student' by now. And yes, by this time, by my college spring break, I have come to agree on one thing: College is hard. I still have my fighter spirit within me, and I am still hoping for better things to come but yet, I know that I need to be very patient with myself and my life. One goal that I have in mind when I get back to college after spring break is to make my life much happier and less stressful despite everything. I want to be less anxious and worried about school work all the time. This a very vague goal I have now, however, so I hope that I gather enough energy during spring break to find out new ways to give more purpose, happiness, and strength to the last seven weeks of my sophomore year at college.