Next spring, I graduate and leave Ann Arbor for good. Even with still two semesters to go, I am already feeling myself terribly nostalgic at the prospect of bidding farewell to the only place in this country I’ve called home.

But when I first arrived on campus, I was less inclined to label Ann Arbor the best college town in the world. At the beginning of freshman year, I saw the campus as a collection of unappealing, brick academic buildings dotting a largely barren countryside. And in this unwelcoming dystopia, people rarely talked — they only nodded soundlessly in recognition. Who would have blamed me for seeing that? I was, after all, an international student who had, upon arriving to Ann Arbor, been mercilessly placed in the sedate, outermost edge of campus — Baits I.

On one of my first days on campus, I watched a deer outside my residence hall search despondently for food. It was an unsuccessful attempt, of course, for Baits housed no dining facility. On a casual foray near the shrubbery outside the building, I found an odd-smelling sofa and squirrels large enough to devour the deer. A drunken, haggard man lay unconscious by a walking path. Where — and how else — could I have created a preconceived general image of Ann Arbor that was farther from the truth?

Fortunately, a lifetime’s exposure to cable television in Pakistan had me sufficiently well versed in American pop culture to stop me from applying generalizations to a city I had only partly experienced. So I remained cautiously optimistic, convinced that I would soon witness America in all its quintessential Rambo-esque glory.

Not even an earlier encounter with a brusque immigration officer at Chicago airport had dampened my excitement or euphoria. After requesting passengers holding Pakistani and United Arab Emirates passports to step aside, the officer proceeded to make us wait three hours until our names were called out in ominous tones. The subsequent interview had been straightforward. Until, of course, we got to a harder question: what color was my hair? “Black,” I had answered coolly. “No, it isn’t,” he replied angrily. “It’s dark brown.” Then he needlessly reprimanded me for my flippant outlook on life as I stood bewildered and perplexed before a scared South Asian student audience.

Still, it seemed the University was determined to test how much my optimistic patience would endure. Following University procedure, first-year international students had to register in the final weeks of August, later than all other freshmen. Caught in the urgency of simultaneously picking classes and figuring out how to use Wolverine Access and CTools, I found myself with a class schedule that required four hours of travel time shuttling back and forth between Baits and the corridors of Angell Hall.

On my first day of classes, with my head still spinning from orientation lessons and tentative class schedules, I waltzed absentmindedly onto a bus when I was ready to return to North Campus. Instead of being conveniently deposited at the Baits bus stop, I found myself looking at scenery I had never seen before, realizing far too late I had taken the wrong bus and ended up near the Northwood apartment complex.

Sadly, that wasn’t my last exhausting bus ride. Later that year, the state of Michigan, eager to contribute to the international student’s freshman-year obstacle course, decided to impose a blanket ban preventing temporary residents from acquiring driver’s licenses. Limited to travel itineraries that depended on Amtrak and Greyhound routes, I spent fall break touring Midwestern cities like Grand Rapids, Cleveland and Toledo. But unfortunately, I wasted much of the time waiting at Greyhound stops in Jackson, Mich., Gary, Ind., and a host of other cities with names that would be more appropriate in a University yearbook.

Luckily, first appearances can be deceiving. In following years, I managed to erase lingering memories of monotonous bus rides, immigration waiting rooms and needless detours to Detroit and develop a thorough appreciation of the city. Now, from the heart of Central Campus — driver’s license in hand and officially brown-haired — I find myself in my senior year at the University. But it was only after successfully maneuvering an obstacle course — that may well have skewed perceptions, for me or any other international student, the other way — that I learned to make the most of my foreign experience.

—Emad Ansari is a senior in the School of Public Policy