Things they don't tell you about Bidesh: Part 1

Growing up and seeing my cousin study in LSE and then hearing about all these A-star kids from school going to this great university or that great college abroad, Bidesh was a sugarcoated dream painted in gold for yours truly. The contrasting reality of being a Bangladeshi studying abroad has now taken the form of bitter statements and this series of articles that I present to you.
For a start, knowing that I am spending thousands of dollars on a degree that will never ensure a good enough job to break-even with my investment is depressing enough. You might get admitted to a great school, heck you might even get into Harvard, but if you're looking for a job, there's just more and more that you need to do. Join this club, that fraternity, attend this networking party, that conference, update your CV incessantly, and at the end of the day, if you can't talk properly or dress nicely, you will not get the job any way. That's not much to look forward to when you start university. It's even worse for me because I am an Arts student and you can't possibly get a job that pays well with that degree. I console myself by saying that I never wanted a job; I came here for the experience.
But what experience? You'd think that university is a rich blend of different cultures, providing you with an overwhelming dose of insight into what the real world really looks like. Sadly, your dreams of enlightenment end right there. From what I have seen in the past few months, university is full of immature individuals still mentally stuck in high school and trying to fit into the 'American Ideal'. You meet a Taiwanese and ask her where she's from, and though she still shops from China Town and cooks Ramen noodle at home, she's definitely from some part of Canada. Never in a thousand years will she admit to her heritage. Sometimes, you'll even meet a Bangladeshi who will not tell you where she's from until you push and push and investigate. What a sad day that might be, when a fellow Bangladeshi denies to be one of our own. Don't fret though; do not get angry at such a person, for the Bidesh is full of them. Remember, you are on foreign grounds, home to people who are there mainly because they do not like their original countries or the opportunities available there. So, if you think university abroad will enlighten you about all the different cultures of the world, then you are sadly mistaken. What you might learn though is how different nationals tend to party.
You will run into a breed of people who will lock themselves up in the library for 20 hours before mid-terms and swallow the books down. If you thought mukhosto bidya was a south-Asian thing, then you are mistaken again, dear reader. After the mid-terms are done, they will forget everything they have studied and throng the pubs. Thus, you lose as a potential candidate for an intellectual conversation. This, by far, has been the saddest of all tragedies for me.
They will go swimming with me or to this workshop or that, but they will not have a conversation with me.
Once in a while, you might be blessed with consumerism and a friend might just talk to you about their new jacket or a good shoe but then, it is back to the same old conversations about which programme you are doing and how well you did on your mid-term. The non-whites in a university in a white country are whiter than the white people themselves. They hide their identity in invisibility cloaks and wear vanity and emptiness in their folds.
So there you go, dear readers of Bangladesh, now you know a little bit of what this poor writer feels in our glorified Bidesh.