How GPT Inspired Saera Durrani to Study, Intern and Work in Asia
- Apr 10, 2019
When Saera Durrani attended Global Professional Training: East and Southeast Asia in Fall 2017, she was a shy freshman, nervous to make new friends. Flash forward a year later, she is making friends from all over the world during her exchange program at the Chinese University of Hong Kong. During her time abroad, she also spent three weeks in China with an international exchange student she had met at GPT.
“It’s crazy. You meet a random person in random circumstances, and then you're living with them in China,” she described.
Attending GPT motivated Durrani, an international relations and global studies major, to build friendships with people from different cultural backgrounds. After the conference, she frequently hosted gatherings with the international friends she met through GPT. “We'll get together and I'll cook them dinner or they'll cook me dinner,” she described.
“GPT was a really great way to make global friendships,” she added. “It was my freshman year. I didn't really know anyone and to make friends that aren't even from here, that was a big step for me.”
Durrani herself is a global citizen. Born in Bolivia, her family moved to Houston when she was three years old. Her father is Pakistani and her mother is Bolivian, so she was raised in a multicultural and multilingual household. “I speak Spanish with my mom and my siblings, but I speak Urdu with my dad and with my grandmother,” she described.
But growing up in between cultures was not as easy as it sounds, Durrani explained. Being different from everyone else wasn’t something that she appreciated. However, she has learned to cherish her cultures and that was what inspired her to choose her major.
“When I was little, I always didn't like not being from here. I always wished that I was born here,” she said. “But once I was older, I wanted to learn more about different cultures and relationships between nations, and that's why I was interested in studying international relations.”
Durrani’s interest in Asia began when she decided to study Mandarin for her foreign language requirement. Already fluent in three languages, she said she wanted to take on the challenge to learn a language completely new to her.
“I'm from South America, so I already know a lot about like Latin American cultures and I've been to Europe, but it didn't really spark an interest in me,” she said. “I like learning about developing countries more than developed countries, and I’ve always looked towards Asia.”
Studying abroad also gave Durrani the opportunity to travel to surrounding countries in East and Southeast Asia, including Vietnam, the Philippines, Malaysia, Singapore and mainland China.
Through her travels, she was able to contextualize the information she learned in her classes.
“This past semester, I had a class on Southeast Asian government and politics and we literally talked about all the countries I visited,” she said. “It was so much easier to understand what we were talking about in class.”
But the most meaningful part of her time in Hong Kong was the connections she made. One of her closest friends in Hong Kong was an international student from Mexico. Since returning to Austin, Durrani has visited her friend in Mexico and her friend has visited her here.
“Some people might think that you just make friends for the summer, but you really make friends for a long time,” she said. “They’re real friendships.”
During her time in Hong Kong, Durrani was also able to share her experiences on Texas Global Instagram through the Global Ambassador program. She said being a Global Ambassador was a way to share not only her daily life in Hong Kong but also help other students interested in studying abroad.
“If you are someone looking for programs, Global Ambassadors could be really helpful. Because the page description will tell you, ‘Okay, it's going to be in Barcelona, and you're going to study this,’ but you don't really know what that looks like,” she said. “So, whenever I was thinking of things to upload, I was really thinking of things that would be useful, and things that will attract people to Hong Kong.”
Her collective experiences have made Durrani realize that she wants to work in Asia, especially in developing countries.
“After having studied abroad, it has narrowed my focus and I feel more comfortable going into my senior year knowing what I want to do now. Before, I had no idea what I wanted to do, but studying abroad helped me know where I want to go on what I want to do.”
To further equip herself with skills to work internationally, Durrani is going on an international internship program in Shanghai this summer. Through the internship, she hopes to experience living in Asia outside of the comforts of university life.
“I want to experience like living there on another level because in Hong Kong, we lived on campus and we had a cafeteria and food, so we didn't really have to prepare own food,” she shared. “I wanted to do an internship to experience life from another perspective.”
Throughout the whole process of applying to her programs, Texas Global has given her great help and resources. Durrani received the Freeman Asia Grant and is currently applying to the Gilman Scholarship to help pay for her summer working in Shanghai. She has had success with study abroad scholarships previously, having received the International Education Fee Scholarship for her exchange program in Hong Kong.
“They were the ones who introduced me to Hong Kong because I would have never thought about it. And they were very helpful when it came to communication between the university abroad and myself,” she said. “Even when you come back, they're always constantly providing you with other ways to interact with people and use your experience abroad.”
In retrospect, Durrani said studying abroad has made her a more outgoing person.
“My freshman year I was really closed off and whenever we had to speak during class, I wouldn't really have anything to say,” she said. “But then after going abroad and just being thrown into a situation where I have to meet new people, coming back, I interact more with people and I feel more comfortable speaking in class.”
What started at a weekend-long conference on campus has changed the course of her life and awarded her with long-lasting meaningful friendships and a clearer direction for her career.
“You're not going to come back the same person and if you do, then you didn't do it right,” Durrani explained.
Learn more about GPT: East and Southeast Asia and explore internships abroad.
