'Like Hell and Paradise': A Polish Student at Harvard

The average Harvard student gets used to being assualted by pamphleteers in the Square within a few weeks. But Joanna Wroblewski '85 still is not used to the fact that no one even bothers to take down the name of the pamphleteers--as they do in her native Poland.

When she came to the United States a little more than a year ago from Warsaw, the new transfer student had to suppress the instinct to always carry her I.D. in case she was stopped and had to overcome a fear of speaking on the telephone, she says. She still looked around to see if anyone was listening to her conversations whenever she ate out at restaurants.

After a year in Cambridge with her family--her father was a Nieman Fellow--she decided to apply as a transfer student from the University of Warsaw to Harvard. But the decision to apply wasn't made without some reluctance. Wroblewska wanted to go back to Poland.

"It was a big chance for me, but I wasn't sure what I wanted. The whole idea when I started writing to colleges was so unreal. All the time I was preparing to go back to Poland." she says.

With some reluctance she applied to Bowdoin, Wellesley, and Harvard, three colleges which give scholarships to foreign students. Harvard accepted her with two year's credit for her three years as an economics and computer major at the University of Warsaw.

Wroblewska and her brother, who now lives in Houston, decided to stay when her parents returned to Poland last year. But return for her will only be more difficult as she spends more time in America.

"It would be easier to go back after a year here, before you get used to a luxuries," she says. "I'll get more used to everything. It'll only get harder."

After a year her she says she feels increasingly tied to Poland. She particularly remembers her original perceptions of this country. "My first impression was really interesting because we landed in New York. After Warsaw and martial law, it was like hell and paradise. Under martial law people are so sad. Everything looked grey and sad," she says.

Nevertheless, Wroblewska says she continues to feel very Polish. Poland is my country," she says, adding of Polish expatriates generally, "its like a disease--they can't stop thinking about Poland."

Her ties to Poland have little to do with hopes for a future there, since as Wroblewak says. "It just doesn't matter what you study because you won't get a job."

"But there is something about Poland which even Americans who visit miss when they come back--there is a spirit among people," she adds. "In America I don't feel that In America every one is seperate, individual."

And people in America are so used to freedom that they hardly notice it, she says. "When I came here it was shocking to me all that freedom and democracy. With martial law, just because we didn't have freedom, people are so hungry for freedom," the student recalls. Young people have never had any freedom in their life--but everybody cared," she adds.

"A lot of people do risky things," she says, adding. "It's illegal but people do that because they feel--and I felt it when I was there that you have to do something."

As a student at Harvard, Wroblewski has had to get used to the sense of competition. American students, especially at Harvard, feel they have so much to win that they work harder I don't like the competition. In Poland I was much more relaxed I didn't study as much," she says

Wroblewski is sure that she wants to go back to Poland after graduation, at least to visit. If things change drastically, which she doubts, she wants to live there. But if she returns there is the danger that she would not be allowed to leave again unless she gave up her Polish citizenship.

"I miss Poland, but when I was in Poland, a friend of mine who had turned 21 said" now I'm 21, it's all going down from here. You can't achieve. I knew there was nothing I could do with my life," she says, adding. "Coming here and staying here was like opening my world.