Middle Eastern students uncertainties exacerbated by COVID-19

Throughout the past year, since the news of a fast-spreading, deadly pandemic first broke, friends and family across the world have often been on my mind. Thinking of aging, vulnerable or sick friends and family and how they were faring as the pandemic reached their areas has been a legitimate concern over the past 12 months. One group, namely college students, however, has rarely been afforded sympathetic attention in public discourses.

Famous for their enviable youth, or for conducting lives of adventure and risk, college students are stereotyped by a famous illusion of invincibility that borders on recklessness. Though many continue to live up to this template, some college students have had an especially rough ride this year. I am thinking particularly of those who left the Middle East with big ambitions, and at significant cost, to head to Europe or North America. Stresses caused by the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic have been especially destabilizing for foreigners in countries with high numbers of infections. Despite wealth and advanced healthcare, countries such as the US and the UK, which are normally desirable for international students, have proven particularly difficult for students from the Middle East, many of whom find themselves in unenviable positions.

Roua and Sami (not their real names) were among those who left the Middle East for Western colleges. Roua is a Syrian undergraduate who, by way of Jordan and various stops in Europe, earned a scholarship at a prestigious university in the US. She managed to obtain a student visa, miraculously, and was starting to feel a temporary sense of stability in her undergraduate degree at a respected East Coast university. Having left the country for a short break, she was suddenly faced with the prospect of not being able to return to the US when new directives from the Trump administration imposed severe travel restrictions. At one point, the shifting rules stipulated that foreign students whose universities were to resume teaching exclusively online could no longer re-enter the country. While those restrictions were successfully challenged in court by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Harvard University, Roua’s plans for a degree and career were suddenly and deeply shaken. Her Syrian passport meant that the only other place she could legally go was her war-torn country.

Sami, another successful young Arab, had resigned from a lucrative financial sector job in the Middle East to pursue a graduate degree in the UK. Over and above professional risk, Sami’s decision involved considerable financial risk in the form of income loss, ludicrous overseas student fees, and the cost of living in a major British city. An investment worth the risk was his hope back in 2019, when he accepted the prestigious offer, but he instead found himself studying online, he told me from his forced self-isolation on campus. There had been no shortage of online degrees, including from top-tier and Ivy League universities, but Sami had opted for the full, immersive experience by deciding to move to the UK. After a few weeks of an intensive one-year degree, his world seemed to have turned upside down, as all teaching moved suddenly online. Instead of networking around the city, Sami found himself confined to a single dorm room, and to a computer screen.

Who would not wish Roua had not traveled for a short break? Or that Sami had stayed at his job and studied online instead? If only we had a crystal ball. Both Roua and Sami graduated with excellence, no small feat in pandemic-hit academia. But even with a crystal ball, there is no telling how profound the impact on their careers will be.

As a first step toward feeling secure and being productive in our daily lives, establishing a routine is one of the most important things people try to achieve. Similar to the basic safeties in life, such as food and shelter, we need a degree of predictability in the small day-to-day things for our emotional and mental energies not to be depleted easily. We usually struggle to find our routine after holidays or unexpected life events. Most difficult of all is struggling to return to normal daily life after major disruptions, like losing a loved one, moving house, starting (or losing) a job or going to a new school.

Psychologists tell us that changes that upset our routine cause various levels of stress, as some can be more serious than others. The loss of a close family member, such as a parent, a sibling or a life partner, ranks at the top, being considered the most stressful life event a human could endure. Second on the list of major stressors is moving house. It appears that, when our physical and geographic environment changes, the resulting temporary disorientation causes us deep stress. So if we think of a young person who moved from the Middle East to Western Europe or North America for college, we can begin to understand how stressed they might be. This year, just as those students were starting to find their footing away from family, in a new country, amid a different culture, with a new city and a foreign language to navigate, the norms and habits of academic study, an unfamiliar educational system, and a living environment in college like no other, a global pandemic hit.

There has also been some reporting about how the pandemic has increased stress for college professors. Educators had — and are still having — to reinvent their jobs as they try to use continually evolving online platforms, while also negotiating increasingly tight budgets and anxious administrations. These are very legitimate concerns, which call for focused attention in their own right. My aim in this column has been to reflect a sense of the renewed fears and difficulties students from the Middle East are facing in foreign countries. This year, over and above regular stresses, which are not small, a host of new uncertainties have been added by a global pandemic. Those uncertainties will have a lasting effect on the region’s youth and their professional prospects in an increasingly nervous financial world.

• Tala Jarjour is author of “Sense and Sadness: Syriac Chant in Aleppo.” She is Visiting Research Fellow at King’s College London, and Associate Fellow of Yale College.