Starting a new semester has always been one of my favorite times of the year. The anxiety and excitement of picking out a first day of school outfit, buying new pens and notebooks all crisp and unused ready to be filled with copious notes, and the occasional doodle, and most obviously the security of seeing your friends every day, all highlights of a new semester. However, this year the creature comforts of buying new black G-2 Pilot pens, and hanging out with my friends between our 12:30 classes was overshadowed by the fact that I was in an entirely new academic atmosphere. All my courses and professors, my friends all entirely new, in a new city, with a new culture and language. In building up my expectations regarding my life in Istanbul I needed to factor in the academic aspect in which my hopes and intuitions regarding my ability to integrate as a global citizen and expound my ideas in a more universal setting would be actualized. The first day of school proved to be such an experience. I walked to school from my apartment about 20 minutes away and entered into the one atmosphere where I have always felt comfortable. In one of my first classes we engaged in a discussion regarding the European Union and the actuality of Turkey's accession to the Union. Although a topic that at this point I was not intimately familiar with, I contributed and interacted with the other Bahçeşehir students on an intellectual platform. In my classes thus far my experiences with the students have only added to my practical understanding of the world at large, and sharing those intellectual discourses with students who vary so deeply in background and cannon of exposure is a major component of what makes this semester so incredibly valuable to me personally. Within those conversations lie the basis of understanding at a personal level, and within that premise the ability to ameliorate ones preconceived notions of the other.
