"My childhood was always in the context of two cultures—transiting between two different worlds, and trying to piece together meaning from both fabrics of life on either side of the border. I was born in Mexico and grew up in Arizona, traveling back and forth on epic road trips from home in San Luis Potosí, to home in Tucson. Though at times it was difficult to piece together different patches of culture, this was just the beginning of a cultural search that would lead me to different places all over the world for just that same feeling—that sensation of awe as a previously unseen world before you turns your life upside down, forcing you to piece together a new meaning from this old life. The first time I realized the importance of this internal cultural dialogue was when my family and I spent a year just outside of Paris while I was still in high school. Knowing just enough French to survive, I was placed in the “Français Special” class along with other sophomores from around the world in my same situation, and soon enough we were inseparable. We went to Paris every week, visited museums, sat at cafes, and assimilated into this new life thrust upon us, wandering around as a single unit, comprised of a strange blend of many cultures. Yet it was this common exploration of a world so new to all of us that opened us to each other’s different paces of life like none of us had ever experienced. Each integrant of the FS brought something special and distinct to the group, which everyone appreciated, and it was each and every one of these contributions that chiseled away at my world-view, slowly changing who I was into our unique multi-cultural blend. The life I had settled into so deeply was fundamentally shaken by these friends of mine, and for this I am eternally grateful to them. They taught me to be inclusive to new ways of life, always thinking of the world past our immediate surroundings, as it can always hold a reality so different from one’s own.

In this same way, studying abroad at Harvard has helped me see what life is like outside the bubble. I have been lucky enough to have had the opportunity to go abroad during both a summer and a term, and I have completely loved it. In either case, it was much the same feeling as in going to France during high school, though in a much different context. It didn’t matter if I was living with a labmate on the outskirts of Lucknow in India during the summer, or spending two weeks at a time during the semester driving through the southeast of Turkey. In either case, the people and traditions of a new world are just the refresher I needed to see the wider scope of the globe. Their perspectives have opened up the larger context of the world, and have helped me peer past the Harvard bubble."

Email: fjmarmol [at] fas.harvard.edu