Finding out that I had been accepted to NSLI-Y was one of the happiest days of my life. In the days leading up to my pre-departure orientation , I spent dozens of hours researching my target language, reading up on the culture of my host city (Pune, India), and daydreaming about what it’d be like to live with a host family. However, just a few weeks after my time in bliss, I learned that all in-person NSLI-Y programs would be canceled. My envisioned summer in India turned into an online program to be completed from my home in New Jersey. As you could probably imagine, I was devastated. I subsequently went into my NSLI-Y summer program with low expectations; without being able to travel abroad, I felt I I wouldn’t get the full language learning experience I had dreamt of.
During my first class meeting in June, I met my cohort of roughly 20 people from around the country, students with whom I expected to spend long virtual days learning Hindi. I could tell that they, too, had a sense of disappointment: The virtual setting seemed to leave everyone in a pessimistic state. Still, I had never met people as passionate and enthused about language learning till that moment.
That feeling extended beyond the initial meeting and into our daily class sessions. While we never had the opportunity to meet our previously-planned host families, we did spend long periods of time with our instructors and teachers. Slowly but surely our feelings of disappointment gave way to our excitement over the connections that we were making, strengthened by our love for language-learning. Even outside of our class sessions, I found myself spending time with my cohort working on our Hindi skills. Whether through binging Bollywood movies on Netflix Party or studying for our exams on late night Zoom sessions, the virtual setting of our program didn’t impede our ability to connect and further our language abilities together.
All along, the biggest part of NSLI-Y wasn’t travelling abroad or staying with a host family. It’s the connections that you make, and the people that you meet. Being abroad didn’t stop any of that from happening for me; in fact, it allowed me to grow closer to my fellow NSLI-Y-ians. Moving forward into the next chapter of my life, I am proud to say that I will bring all of the friendships, experiences, and lessons that I encountered with me.
By: Amol Bhingarde
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