From May 27 to May 31, our office will be closed.  May 27, Tulane University is closed in observance of Memorial Day.  May 28- May 31, the entire OISS team will be attending the NAFSA Annual Conference.  As the most important annual event for international educators, this conference will provide our team with vital updates and ideas that will help us to better serve our international community.  As a bonus, we’re using this opportunity to update the carpet at 6901 Willow. 

If you have any timely requests, such as an OPT, CPT, or Academic Training application or a program extension, please be sure to get complete application to your OISS advisor no later than Friday, May 17 to allow for 3 to 5 business days for processing.  If not, we may not be able to complete your request before the conference. 

During this time, we’ll be monitoring our email for true immigration emergencies, but please be sure to expect a delay in our response.  We’ll still be there if you really need us. 

Thank you for your cooperation,

The OISS Team

Center for Global Education
North America

 

“My dad worked for the State Department. So I grew up moving abroad, basically my whole life. I was born in the States, but when I was six weeks old, we moved to Cameroon. From there, Armenia, Switzerland, London, and Japan. I feel like when I go into a new place, I reserve expectations and take stock of what's already going on. I think that's something I've learned how to do really subconsciously, but it's helped in a lot of different random situations. 

I was one of the very, very few people that managed to go abroad last year. I went to Rwanda in the fall (2020) for four months. It ended up being one of two programs not canceled during the pandemic because their COVID response was really strong. I didn't have any concept of what flying to a foreign country in the middle of the pandemic to then go study abroad would be like, so I think getting on that plane was kind of a fearless decision to make. I was just trying to reserve expectations, trying not to think about it too much and wait until I got there and see what was going on. 

The first morning, I woke up in a hotel room to get a COVID test. Rwanda is called ‘the land of a thousand hills’ because the entire country is on all of these hills. I had never seen anything like it before. The hotel was at the top of a hill, so I remember waking up and looking out and everywhere you could see houses on hills. And there was a little city on top of the hill over there and it just looked like nowhere I had ever seen before. I remember thinking, ‘Well, I've actually made it here. This is completely different.’ The sun was shining, the weather was perfect. It was a good omen, I felt, when I woke up. I felt like, ‘We did it. We made it here. I can actually do this for four months. Things are okay.’”