Lamisa Shirin Hossain

LAMISA  – [Senior Interviews 1]

The first person I’ve interviewed for this project is my friend Lamisa. She and I work together a lot this year as President and Vice President of Slater International Student Organization. We met our first year during pre-orientation and decided our sophomore spring, before both going abroad for a semester, that we’d devote time to Slater in our last year at Wellesley. This is one of the best decisions I’ve made in my life. Not only have I gotten to understand the school better, meet amazing students from places I have never heard of, and feel like I’m making an impact on the community I live in, I have also had the immense pleasure of getting to know Lamisa better.

She has already taught me so much about what it means to be a good leader – one who leads by example. She has shown me the many benefits of being meticulously organized. She exemplifies the spirit of a global citizen. She also works at the admissions office as a Senior Interviewer and Student Assistant, so if you ever have questions specifically to her, you can definitely get in touch with her! Email askastudent@wellesley.edu

• Where are you from?

Originally from Dhaka, Bangladesh, Lamisa considers herself a proud Bengali. Unlike mine, her familiar answer to the “where are you from?” question is much shorter, much more concrete. Lamisa identifies strongly as a person from Bangladesh and feels connected to home. She swears her parents didn’t teach her to be this way, but from what I know about her father and her mother, I’m going to take a wild guess and say they had some influence on the matter.

Lamisa went to the same primary, middle and high school in her hometown. But in her third year of high school, she began her time at UWC; United World Colleges are a chain of international schools in 16 countries with focuses on encouraging international collaboration and creating global leaders. Throughout our conversation, I realized much of who Lamisa is now was shaped during her two years at the United World College in Mahindra, India.

Thanks to her two years at UWC, she came to Wellesley feeling that tackling the unfamiliar was familiar. Meeting people from different places, challenging her preconceived notions of the world and others, was a common theme throughout her time in high school; her junior year roommates were Israeli, Dutch, and Japanese. Lamisa tells me about her best friend from Israel, laughing: “I can’t visit her at home and she can’t visit me at mine…yep, they won’t let me through with my passport and we wouldn’t take hers either. But it works! We’re still really close.”

Hearing about her incredibly rich UWC experience, I wondered whether coming to Wellesley she felt like she was more than ready. “I think I thought I was prepared,” Lamisa replied. Regardless of how she felt, though, the unchanging fact remains that the first day of pre-orientation at Wellesley was Lamisa’s first day in the U.S.

• Why did you come to Wellesley? Why did you stay?

Lamisa came to Wellesley ready to learn. During her time at UWC she focused on her extracurriculars, because that was the culture of the school. She was part of a peer support group as well as the outreach program at her school. She was responsible for helping organize summer programs at her UWC, and was part of a charity organization that provided financial support for staff working at the school. Coming into Wellesley, she knew she was going to focus on her academics and make the most out of being at an institution where she’ll have all the tools necessary to push herself.

She came to Wellesley for the small class sizes. She came to Wellesley for the Econ department (she went on to talk about the beauty in the “marriage of econ and poli sci”…I tried to look engaged but it all went over my head).

She came to Wellesley for its reputation. “Classic South Asian family situation,” she says, but Lamisa quickly came to find out that this school has this reputation for a reason when she began working at the admissions office and getting very involved on campus.

She only doubted her love of Wellesley later during her sophomore year, when she found that she had overcommitted to too many short term projects. The weather wasn’t helping either.

“I really had to learn to be conscious of what was making me so upset. It made me feel so much better when I was able to point out that the snow was really bothering me.” We spoke about the general expectation we have as international students; fellow travelers and “global citizens” are much more mentally prepared for huge environmental change, especially one like college. This of course isn’t true for all of us, but other than the weather adjustments Lamisa found that making friends among fellow international students was a lot easier to do, especially in the beginning of first year.

Lamisa never thought about transferring – that was never an option. Some students come into college with the “if i don’t like it I’ll just leave” mindset, and it’s important to remember that not all of us are in situations to think that way. Her personality also doesn’t really allow her to give up very easily, so I think it’s a combination of courage, maturity, and persistence that has led Lamisa to where she is now at Wellesley.

• Have you found home, purpose, passions at Wellesley?

Lamisa has found home in friends and professors. And, Slater has always been a place she’s felt welcome. Her best friends whom she met during pre-orientation and the following few months of the semester are still her close friends to this day. Pre-orientation helped her find her space and then prepare you to meet others.

Like many Wellesley students, Lamisa came in to Wellesley already full of ideas and things she was passionate about. Wellesley only challenged and then strengthened them throughout the years. She’s learned that she enjoys being challenged, and is an introvert. The support system she’s had since day one, especially her international family, has helped ground her as well- thanks to a friend named Mashiwat (c/o 2015), Lamisa was able to settle into Wellesley quickly, really finding her “place” during her first semester here. It was important to her that someone with the same educational background as her (same school in Bangladesh, same UWC) was happy at Wellesley and available to give her advice throughout her years in the States.

“I feel so at home here, but this is not home home. The liberal environment of Wellesley helps me feel rather comfortable and at ease, but I…know that’s not the rest of this country.” Homesickness hits hard sometimes, like now (Lamisa hasn’t been back to Bangladesh in over 10 months), so it’s great to have friends from home around, and to be able to go home every once in awhile.

• What are some summer/winter session highlights?

Lamisa usually goes home during the winter break. It’s wedding season in Bangladesh and there’s always a (distant) relative getting married!

During the summers, Lamisa worked in the States and back home. She went back to Bangladesh her first summer but spent a lot of time at home bored. Going from living away from home for years then back in parents house, she felt her freedoms being limited and a lack of growth.  Wellesley helped her find and fund opportunities in her two upcoming summers. Her sophomore summer she lived in Berkeley, California, worked with an elected official in Oakland, and learned what it takes to work within a multi-sector collaborative. This past summer she worked for a labor rights organization in New York City. Apparently she got both internships through CWS now called CE, so check out their websites and ask around if you’re trying to do the same!

Then in her Junior Fall, Lamisa studied abroad in England – “no better time to travel!” She had lived in England when she was way younger but didn’t remember anything, so it was an exciting opportunity to be able to go back as a university student and revisit all the places she had been before. She chose to go to Oxford in part to make mom happy, but mainly because she enjoyed academic learning and wanted to continue engaging in schoolwork during her semester abroad. I had a very different experience from Lamisa during my semester in Copenhagen, but as we spoke I thought that the phrase “to each their own” could not have fit the situation better. I needed a semester where I could focus on work outside of the classroom so I chose a program that gave me ample opportunties to travel. Lamisa chose to challenge herself further academically, but in a new environment (she said Oxford was easier than Wellesley, btw). We both came out the other side knowing ourselves better and ready to take on another year and a half of Wellesley.

• What next?

And now that we’re back as Seniors on this campus, there’s a lot to think about – like our next steps. This winter, Lamisa will be taking part in the Albright Institute where she hopes to indulge further in her nerdy fascination with policy and policy-making, as well as get to know and work with people from academic disciplines totally different from her own.

“Are you going home after you graduate?” I asked, knowing she’s as tired of the question as I am. Her immediate answer was “not right away.” Her response that followed was much more self-reflective than mine ever would have been. “There is much more opportunity for me abroad, right now,” she said. She’s a proud Bengali, born and raised in South Asia – sure, she’s an outsider in the U.S. – but when she goes home she realizes that she is very much part of a upper-middle class society of Bangladesh, not part of majority culture there either. It helps to have friends who are going through the same realizations and transitions, she says. I was nodding the whole time. “It’s nice to know that it’s not just me.”

Not just me. This is exactly what I thought when I first met Lamisa and began working closely with her last year. We’re both more comfortable with communicating in English and in Western clothes. Some parts of her are so Bengali (some parts of me are so Japanese), while others are so westernized. Some things about home she loves, some out-dated traditions she thinks we can all do without. She feels an immense responsibility, a sense service to her country – but knows from first-hand experience of being a politically active woman’s daughter that she herself is not cut out for politics. She believes there’s a way for her to “do something substantial for Bangladesh” in her own way, like through education reform. Her deep interest in improving the conditions of the people in her country are what’s driven her to choose the topic for her thesis, as well as motivated her to continue her own education at Wellesley.

Post graduation, Lamisa hopes to utilize what she’s learned in Econ and Poli Sci to be part of think tanks, or do consulting and research for causes she cares about.

So where do you want to go, Lamisa?
“Anywhere. I’m not picky! Anywhere that’ll employ me.”

• Advice?

• Ask questions.

• Try everything at least once.

Classes to look out for: Art (take advantage of liberal arts), WGST, Writings of Jane Austen FYS, econ classes (it’s no cakewalk, take it seriously!)

Thank you, Lamisa for taking time out of your busy week to talk to me about you. I’ve always been fond of you but this made me love you more – who knew that was possible.

Come back next week to check out my profile of another campus celeb!