

Javier Calleja Erdmann
Expat Generation
Javier Calleja Erdmann is a sophomore writing about the international student experience. His column, “Expat Generation,” typically runs every other Friday.
Featured columns

Expat Generation: Challenging privilege requires gratitude and teamwork
There is something markedly vicious about the hostility with which privilege is currently often discussed in the United States. An accusatory tone stews division between people where consensus might have otherwise been attained.

Expat Generation: Language is a reflection of culture, learning a new language is a reflection of yourself
We take language to be our own but we forget that it never was, and even as it releases our minds from inner silence, it constricts our thoughts to the molds of a particular language’s grammar logic and sentence structure.

Expat Generation: COVID-19 is a call to work together
This global crisis requires governments to seek solutions without borders.

Expat Generation: Growing into your own skin as an expatriate
Growth equates to finding differences within or without you that you then apply to yourself, whether by affinity or necessity.

Expat Generation: Analyzing the 2020 race as an international student
The United States is at the core of the post-Cold War neoliberal international order, so the attitudes and actions that U.S. leadership hold and partake in are of enormous consequence to the rest of the world.

Expat Generation: Finding a ground in between the known and foreign
That’s the thing about this USC group — it only loses to good teams.

Expat Generation: Experiencing imposter syndrome as an international student
For that is the thing about the foreign: It only remains such until one experiences it, shakes its hand, shares a laugh with it. Perhaps there are aliens living among us, but not to worry; for all we know, they might be more human than our own judging eyes trying to set them apart.