Education Professor Andrew Garrod recently released his fourth book, "Crossing Customs: International Students Write on U.S. College Life and Culture," a collection of 13 autobiographical narratives written by international students at Dartmouth.
The essays chronicle the students' experiences adapting to a new culture, and learning to redefine themselves as multicultural people. Garrod pointed out that English, the language in which the students wrote, was often their second language.
"Given the small number of international students at Dartmouth, they do very, very well," he said, mentioning that this year's valedictorian Amarinder Grewal '99 is an international student from India. "This is a group the College needs to nurture because they bring academic distinction."
Garrod said he thinks the collection is relevant to the current controversy over the Social and Residential Life Initiative.
"The very sort of things the committees are exploring in the Trust ees' Initiative are explored in the essays - links between races, links between relationships and alcohol, and social space for students," he said. "They are viewing it with fresh eyes."
The book represents a variety of nationalities, featuring work by students from Bosnia, Bulgaria, China, India, Malaysia, Nigeria, Norway, Pakistan, South Africa, South Korea and Trinidad. Former Student Assembly President Frode Eilertsen '99, who is from Norway, contributed to the collection, as did Almin Hozdic '00, who is Bosnian.
Garrod co-edited the book with Jay Davis '90, who teaches English at the Richmond Middle School in Hanover. At the College, they collaborated with students over a four-to-five year period as part of an independent study for which Garrod gave academic credit.
All of the students who contributed to the book wrote that Dartmouth altered their views of the world similarly, Garrod said. He cited one student who wrote, "I came to Dartmouth to work, not to find myself. The idea of 'finding myself' is foreign to me," referring to the perception many international students have about American college life being more about resolving some conflict or crisis about one's self-identity than about learning and work.
Student contributors Yu Chen '97, who is from China, and Georgina Gemmill '96, from South Africa, both cited courses in the Women's Studies Department as instrumental to changing their points of view about themselves.
"I had been raised in a bed of stereotypes regarding race and gender roles, and was unaware of the extent to which I had adhered to the status quo of a strongly patriarchal, authoritarian society ... my sorority and my women's studies course have provided me with an example of women who share my interests and ambitions," Gemmill wrote.
International students "are amazed at the wealth of this place, at the resources, at the boundlessness of the library and at the availability of the professors," Garrod said.
However, not all of their experiences at Dartmouth were positive.
One student writer, a native of India and identified by the pseudonym "Devneesh," related his horror stories of a freshman-year roommate who threw big parties and "put up posters of cars, women and all the different types of condoms one could ever want to use." Devneesh wrote about his depression, the hostility he suffered from his white roommate who accused him of wrongfully taking another white student's place at Dartmouth, and of his feeling like a "tan dog" trained to dance for the administration.
"They find Americans to be ethnocentric, relatively uninformed about the rest of the world, and they are frequently puzzled by collegiate life and the role alcohol plays in it," Garrod said. "They're all wrestling, they're all trying to make friends, and the shared experience of being an outsider is often greater than the bond of a shared language."
International students at the College tend to be slightly older than the average American college student, and they know why they came here - to work very hard, and to honor the financial sacrifices made by their families in order to send them to a university in the United States, he said.
Garrod said he thinks "Crossing Customs" would be helpful in any course that deals with immigration or adaptation, or with college life and culture. The book could also help counselors and college administrators interested in attracting, keeping and supporting international students, he said.
He plans to use the book in his Educational Issues in Contemporary Society course, along with "First Person, First Peoples," another collection of Dartmouth student essays edited by Garrod.
The book is part of the Garland Studies in Higher Education series.
Garrod is also an editor of "Souls Looking Back: Life Stories of Growing Up Black," published this spring, and "Adolescent Portraits," which is used at the College in the Adolescent Development education course.
A fifth collection of student narratives, "Learning Disabilities and Life Stories," co-edited by Garrod, Pano Rodis and Mary Lynn Boscardin, will be published in December.
