DOUGLAS: That art history gal

Hey BU! This week I talked to someone with a unique perspective on what it means to be at a university in Boston. Her name is Defne Calgar and she is an international student from Istanbul.

My first question was how she ended up at BU all the way from Turkey. She told me that because the university education system in Turkey is not very good, all of her friends go abroad for college.

“And since it’s weird for a Turkish person to go to the middle of America, to a village you know, you choose a university city,” she said.  “Or New York or Los Angeles, so that’s why I came to Boston.”

Defne is a junior in the College of Arts and Sciences studying Art History with a minor in Muslim Cultures. She wants to ultimately combine those two interests to help promote Middle Eastern and Turkish art to the rest of the world.

And she looks cool enough to do it. When I first saw her, I was totally jealous. It’s obvious that she doesn’t try to look cool, she just does. I think that’s a perfect person to be if you’re going into the art world. I’d listen to her opinion on pretty much anything.

I went to Istanbul when I was a senior in high school, so I wanted to know Defne’s perspective of Boston as an international student.

“It’s completely different from Istanbul,” she said. “To be honest with you, I get kind of bored here.”

That’s not to say she doesn’t like it in Boston. She has been here for three years already, but compared to Istanbul’s cosmopolitan identity and size, I can see how Boston might feel like a sleepy little village.

“We go out from time to time, but it’s finished at 2 a.m.,” she said. “And then you ask, ‘What to do now? I’m awake.’”

Defne’s English is also impeccable, maybe even better than my own. I think sometimes international students get a bad reputation for not being able to understand English, but not Defne. She went to an American education-based high school, so her math and science classes were in English but everything else was in Turkish.

“Also my English is good because my family is quite international,” she said. “My dad is married to a Dutch woman and my mom is married to an American man. We always speak English at home.”

This girl. She’s the perfect combination of at least three different cultures and is well spoken enough to tell me about it. I want to be her when I grow up, or maybe just friends first. Defne said that most of her friends are international, too, I guess they just understand what it’s like to live in a different country more than an American student.

So BU, let me suggest that you go out and meet an international student today. Maybe he or she will give you an insight into yourself, like how much you eat, which Defne said is still the hardest thing about living in America.

Jemma Douglas is a sophomore in the College of Communication studying Journalism. She can be reached at jwdoug@bu.edu.