I am a 33-year-old grad student finishing a degree in Middle Eastern Studies with a special interest in gender and politics at the CUNY Graduate Center in New York. I have been living in the U.S. since I was 26, having moved here to marry my husband, who is a journalist I befriended online. We live in Brooklyn with our cat. After arriving in the U.S., spending some time improving my English, and a few years doing not terribly interesting part-time work as I got acclimated, I was finally able to fulfill my dream of continuing my education here in the U.S.