In my Senior Year at GW I decided to take part in the international student orientation program. During the orientation, and for weeks afterwards, the international students complained to me: they felt overlooked on campus, lost in the city and didn't feel integrated into the student body. In turn, the students felt lonely and homesick and a surprising number of them ended up returning home before the semester ended. For the amount of money they were spending on the experience I could understand their frustrations only too well. I began mulling over the situation in my mind and thought of some solutions that I wanted our school to consider implementing for next incoming class of international students. I asked for a meeting with the director of the international student program at GW to go over my ideas and midway through our discussion, impressed and energized by my solutions, she offered me an internship on the spot. 

 

There were a lot of ingredients that went into making my idea come to life and ensuring the program ran smoothly. This included: countless email communications with the international students prior to their arrival; recruiting, interviewing and preparing the GW student leaders; designing and procuring orientation t-shirts; coordinating logistics and setting a detailed agenda for the week; strategically separating out each of the 80 students into their cohorts; coordinating a day trip and a celebratory dinner for the last night of the orientation; and running the orientation week itself.

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I had three months to coordinate, organize and finalize every aspect of the program. The amount of work was staggering but I still consider this project one of the most invigorating and enjoyable projects of my career. To this day, I am thankful to my supervisor who trusted me to manage this project on my own because I learned so much about project management and team leadership from this program.

 

Most importantly, the results of my orientation speak for themselves: that semester's international student group had the lowest attrition rate of any other group we had hosted. Only one student returned home before the end of the semester and she returned, reluctantly, due to a severely broken leg, not homesickness. The program was deemed a success and has since been used as the official orientation structure for incoming international students. 

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