In their own words

Mark Ostow

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Zehra Ijaz
Karachi, Pakistan
Trumbull College, English

Has anything surprised you about Yale?

Even though I was from so far away, and I hadn’t spent much time in the United States before, I had no issues settling in. Everyone was very friendly, very welcoming, very interested in my life, where I was from. It was a very open and welcoming community.

Do you know what you’ll be doing next?

I’m going to be doing an internship during the summer in New York City—it’s at a tech start-up company—and looking for full-time stuff while doing that. I am very interested in global health and international development work, so hopefully I’ll transition into that somehow.

Things have been unstable in Pakistan while you’ve been in New Haven. Was that hard for you?

It’s always hard to be away from home. It hasn’t at all changed my perception of home; I plan on being there long-term. My whole family lives there. I’m the only one here. It has been hard to be far away and detached in a way. I probably would have preferred to be home with my family during all that.