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Members of Hamilton’s Class of 2021 are arriving on campus to register, move in and meet their roommates.

Bilal Mustafa ’19 first became acquainted with the subject of finance at Lahore University of Management Sciences in Lahore, Punjab, Pakistan, where he was enrolled for two years before transferring to Hamilton College. At Hamilton, his interest in the market blossomed, as he realized he much preferred learning about the economy outside a formal education structure. This summer, Mustafa is putting his financial knowledge to the test, interning at global markets and financial advisory firm StormHarbour.

During the fall of my junior year, I studied with the Umbra Institute’s Food and Sustainability Program (FSSP) located in Perugia, Italy. Known for its gastronomic gems, extraordinary vista points, and rich history, Perugia, located in the region of Umbria, is home to many university students. It serves as a cross-cultural interface for locals, tourists, and students to interact in a place that has maintained a strong sense of tradition throughout time.

I attended Hamilton’s Associated Colleges in China for the summer and fall semesters of 2006 and went back for the first field studies program in 2007. I graduated from Hamilton in 2008, and am now a doctoral candidate in Chinese literature at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Sitting in Stuttgart Airport on August 1, 2016, awaiting a flight back to Boston, I reflected upon my time in Germany and I wrote the following: “Whether people are from Germany, Italy, America, or Iraq, we’re all about the same. Yes, we have different experiences, and we have different traditions, but we are people. People first. And that will always unite us more than any difference of culture or religion could divide us. I loved learning that this semester because it gave me hope for the world –– hope that we can recognize these similarities and stop with the foolish xenophobia and useless hatred.”

During my junior year of high school, I was offered the rare opportunity to study Japanese for a year with a local Boys & Girls Club and travel to Japan for two weeks. After admiring Japan’s historical and religious sites, embracing the kindness of its people, and falling in love with the vibes of the country, I decided to pursue the language in college. Four semesters of Japanese later, as a Hamilton student I was accepted to the Middlebury Language Program at International Christian University to study in Tokyo for my junior fall.

During my semester abroad in Paris, I interned at TRINOV, a French waste management company that helped its clients become more sustainable and more cost-effective in their waste disposal practices. The company did this through software that organized the types of waste clients produced, determined what amount of the waste was recycled, and found better ways to dispose of each type of waste.

I always thought about studying abroad, but I never thought that it would be feasible as a computer science major. Even if it were possible, would the experience be more valuable than a semester at Hamilton? I wasn't sure at the time, but after finding an abroad program with a computer science department, I was going to find out. In the beginning, I struggled even to buy groceries in a language that I had never seen before. However, by the end of the semester, Copenhagen was home.

I studied abroad in Jordan in the fall of 2015, I studied in Spain the spring of 2016, and I returned to intern with ARDD-Legal Aid in Jordan the summer of 2016. Now that I look back on my time abroad I realize that I have grown a lot, and that my interests around immigration before going abroad did not change so much as they evolved.

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