Hi guys,

My name is Maheen Bajwa, I’m a senior Economics major at Vassar, and I’ve been an OIS intern for two years. I’m from Pakistan, but I’ve also lived in Singapore, Bahrain, Prague, and the UK before moving to Poughkeepsie.

I transferred to Vassar after two years in the United Kingdom. In England, I was in lecture halls with 300 other students, and my professors were just teaching as a means to be able to do their research at the university. “Office hours” were really just one hour, once a week, for all students. I had maybe two assignments a turn, and for one class, 100% of my grade was the final exam. I wasn’t learning anything that way, and I wanted something different.

I came to Vassar because it was small and liberal arts. To be honest, I didn’t really know what that even entailed when I arrived. But I can say for sure, it has been the best education I could have imagined for college. The majority of classes I’ve taken here have been Econ classes, and I go to my professors’ office hours every chance I get. It’s a great opportunity to get help if I don’t understand how to do the problem sets or what went on in class. The nice thing is, your professors will not only remember your names here, but where you’re from, what languages you speak, what your interests are, what you struggle with, and whatever else you tell them. And if you work hard and put in the effort, they’ll definitely notice.

And as for my experiences with other international offices, well they definitely don’t compare to OIS at Vassar! Andrew, Mariyah, and all of us work reaaaalllyyy hard to make your lives easier and more fun here. I’m someone who needs to be surrounded by different cultures and diversity, and I struggled during my first here to find where I fit in. But then I got more involved with OIS and my best friends are all international students. And I would have no idea what to do with my time if I wasn’t spending it at OIS! Well actually, that’s not true… This is where I spend a lot of my time.