A Year at Hartwick: An Exchange Student Falls In Love With USA
Hartwick College helped Moeka Suzuki find her voice.
Hartwick College helped Moeka Suzuki find her voice.
An exchange student from Aoyama Gakuin University in Shibuya City, Tokyo, Moeka was in Professor Amy Forster-Rothbart’s Introduction to Comparative Politics class when she raised her hand and offered a thought for the first time. “I knew I didn’t need to be afraid to speak in class,” she said. “And then it became easier.”
She came to Hartwick, in part, to strengthen her English speaking skills. “I wanted to speak with people as much as possible to practice,” she said. “People here are so friendly and talk with new people without hesitation.”
And though coming to campus was her first international travel experience, it wasn’t her last. “I’ve been to seven countries since I arrived here!”
In addition to vacations with friends to Canada and Mexico, she joined the “Populism in Central Europe” J Term course, visiting Hungary, Austria, the Czech Republic.
She’ll spend a month in Oneonta, working remotely and practicing piano in the rehearsal spaces in Anderson, then return to Aoyama Gakuin University to complete her senior year.
And she’s already planning to come back. “My biggest goal is to come back to the US,” she said. “As soon as I arrived, I fell in love with the US.”
National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) visiting associate professor, specializes in comparative literature, film and visual culture, with a particular focus on Turkish and global migrant cultural productions, and critical theory.
Associate professor of psychology and department chair, knows that research isn’t just about what goes on in the lab
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