Far From Home - By Clara Girardon
Far FROM HOME
“Being an international student is letting your heart be divided into several small pieces and let them be taken to every corner of the world… and hope that one day they all meet again.”
By Clara Girardon, Student Worker with The WELL
Hi, I’m Clara Girardon, I’m 21 years old, I’m an international student from France and my major is film production. I've been at SBCC since two years ago and this is my fifth semester and unfortunately my last year in this wonderful school. Since this semester I've been working at The Wellness Center and I really like this new job. During those years a lot of things have changed in my life. This experience was the best decision of my entire life so far.
I decided to come to California because I did not know what I wanted to do with my life after my high school graduation. So I decided to travel and learn English for a gap year. California has always been a dream of mine. I applied at SBCC in 2020 but in the middle of July I received an email from my organization telling me I couldn't travel to California because of COVID. So I went to Dublin in Ireland during 10 months after COVID but in Ireland the lockdown was still compulsory so it was really difficult to learn English in my little single room and meet new people to talk with. So the next year I moved to Santa-Barbara to continue to learn English. I didn’t give up on my idea to go to SBCC because this has always been my dream even if I had to lose one more year of study.
I always knew this experience would be very complicated for me because of my english, my sociability and shyness around people but I never was afraid about that until the day i arrived in the United States. When I moved to the other side of the world, everything changed. My character with others, my moods, emotions,... I was not the same person. Everything was new for me. I was totally different than in France. I was so scared about everything, anxious each second time when I met people, I was afraid they'd ask me something because I wouldn't be able to answer about the language barrier. It was the same with every class I had in person. The first year at SBCC I had a school phobia because of all this, as I had no self-confidence with my English, I failed a few classes because of this. But guess what? I never gave up. I got in a lot of bad moods because I was really far from my family and friends, my school phobia, I couldn't take myself out,... However, I worked on myself for example with The Wellness Center (next article I’ll explain to you how The Wellness helped me a lot about that). The first year I wanted to go back to France maybe 1000 times. Like every international, this new life may seem perfect on social networks , but it's far from it in 99% of cases, especially at the beginning. Each single thing is complicated, moved to the other side of the world, the 9-hour time difference, go from seeing your parents and friends every day to only seeing them twice a year, living alone far from family and friends, being independent at the age of 18, making new international friends in a language you can't even speak, shopping on the other side of the world without mom and dad, go to classes with only americans people, know how to integrate, understand everything the teacher explains, because you need to pass your class for the next semester,... All these things are so stressful at first. But I always promised my parents that I would succeed no matter what happened to me. I told them that the hardest thing and the one I’d be most proud of as a very shy, insecure and unsociable girl since I was little would be to get my film production degree at SBCC, get into an acting class (which was clearly impossible for me last year), get a job in SBCC and make a documentary during those years of study. Despite the major learning and comprehension problems I've had since birth, and the multiple bad marks in English I've always had at school, this experience has never scared me. On the contrary, I wanted to come and face the impossible to prove to everyone that in life everything is possible and that you should never give up. Even though I said my first word at the age of 7, 15 years later I'm on the other side of the world doing extraordinary things that 3/4 of the people who laughed at me in the playground still can't do today.
After these three superb years I can finally be proud of myself because I’ve made a documentary about internationals students, i got a wonderful job, I’m currently in an acting class which is very complicated for me but I’ll never give up and I’ll pass this class because this wonderful experience of having taken the decision to come of my own free will to the other side of the world without anyone has enabled me to strengthen my mind, my ambitions and to have learned that in any situation you must never give up and always remain positive.
