With our classes and day jobs, it was not an easy task to organize a get-together, but we managed it. On January 12th, 2019 in a little café in Yerevan the five of us met – Gayane Vardanyan and Arpine Kirakosyan from the Global UGRAD 2017-18 along with Asya Kara-Gevorgyan, Vardine Sargsyan and Ani Khachatryan from the Global UGRAD 2016-17 cohort.
The meeting was really emotional and full of fond memories, as we sat together sharing the crazy and life-changing experience we had, remembering the fun moments and adventures. Somehow a short get-together turned into an almost five-hour meeting full of lots of laughter and gasping, where we managed to talk about the classes we took, the friends we’ve made, the holidays we took part in, the trips we made and a lot more. Today, months after, even the small mishaps and unpleasant situations seemed funny and nostalgic.
We also caught up with the current life of each other, as we spoke about where each of us study now, what we do, where we work and what are our future plans from the prospective of doing a master’s degree and/or career. We shared our plans and gave each other helpful advice. “Do you guys often think of going back to the USA?” – was one of the questions we talked over. The answer was absolutely “yes,” although some of us wanted to do a master’s degree in the USA, others only wanted to be back for a while as a tourist.
Turned out our experiences were absolutely different, and so are our future plans. But there’s just one thing we all agreed on – the Global UGRAD experience changed all of us, once and forever, and there’s no way we could have been any more grateful for that.
Written by Gayane Vardanyan, 2017-18 Global UGRAD student from Armenia at Fairleigh Dickinson University