So I think when I first came here, like every
international student, I was very apprehensive about like settling into the American community,
and just being able to make friends and navigate through social circles here, but I guess ISMP
and like other mentor programs like sponsors, they really help you settle down and as long
as you're willing to reach out to people, there's always someone willing to reach out
back to you, and that was really instrumental in me being able to settle down here.
Pomona does a really good job of like putting you in these automatic communities the second
you set foot on campus, obviously every student has their sponsor group, but as an international
student, I also have my ISMP mentor and my ISMP group.
ISMP is a mentor program on Pomona College's campus.
What they're mainly responsible for is mentoring incoming first-year students.
So we have mentors and and a couple of mentees per mentor who would contact the mentees before
they get on campus in the summer, and make it easier for them to ask questions about
what to bring or what to expect when they arrive on campus.
Definitely one of the best things about Pomona is the close relationships that you get to
form with faculty both inside and outside the classroom.
For me personally, I would consider some faculty members as close mentors and you know, after
graduation, maybe even as close friends, just because of the amount of support and guidance
that they've provided me.
Professors can, like, if you have trouble, they're very accommodating in office hours,
I go to my math professor's office hours very often because the way they teach math here
is so different from the way they teach it back home.
So I think that I definitely feel challenged, but that challenge keeps me going.
I think the food here is really great, they have a lot of different options.
I think we have 7 different dining halls in total, and especially during the first few
months of your freshman year, you really have time to go out and explore all the different
food varieties that the different campuses have to offer, for example, I really love
the salads at Harvey Mudd, and I think Frank has really good brunch.
So I've been to LA on a couple of weekends, it's very easy to get there because the train
station is right here, like a 5-minute walk from my dorm, so it's pretty accessible and
I think it's necessary to have that.
So what my friends usually do is we go to Santa Monica, so that's another Metro right
in, and we go to the beach, you know, just find good places to eat, or we go to Grand
Central Market, which is also downtown, so we get a lot of food, or I go to Thai Town,
and get Thai breakfast you don't find here.
I was the only student coming from Pakistan in my year, and that kind of worried me because
I was like, I don't know if I'm going to find people coming from similar cultures or having
similar interests, but you always do find people, and very quickly.
Within the international community, one of my favorite events each year is the Family
Weekend dinner that ISMP puts on for international students, you know, obviously, since most
of our families are abroad, they wouldn't be here just for one weekend so when our domestic
friends are with their families, what we do is as a group we come together and cook or
have a potluck or we cater from a restaurant, and you know, within our own community, we
come together as a family ourselves.
Having people that are there when you really need it, they're not constantly bothering
you, but when you need it, there's people there for you.
So it's a really nice feeling.