Full Circle in New York

October 2025

Everyone has a city that they idealize in their heads. In my childhood bedroom, for reasons I couldn’t quite articulate, I had a retro poster of New York City on my wall. At that age, I didn’t know what the city truly entailed - I didn’t even know how to pronounce it properly - but I knew it pulled me in. I knew it represented something big, something bright, something I wanted to be part of. Naturally, on my Google Keep, I saved a note that said, “Open this in the taxi ride in NYC!”

When I got into school on the East Coast, there was no real reason to fly into JFK instead of the much closer Virginia airports. But I had to do it for myself - for my younger self with the poster, for the girl who dreamed in places she’d never seen. As I landed in the US, New York City greeted me and became my first American home - home for only three days, but home nonetheless. I was picked up by a friend of my aunt, someone I had never met before but who embraced me like she had known me forever. I met my childhood friends Nazia and Jannat, one in Queens and one in Manhattan, and as I updated my Google Keep note with, “I made it!” I felt like I had stepped into a life I had imagined for years. It was the beginning of everything.

I’ve gone back to NYC multiple times since that first arrival, but this October’s fall break felt different. It felt like everything had come full circle. I was able to come to the US because of a scholarship - the Richmond Scholars program - and every year, the scholars take a senior trip together. For our class, the destination was New York City. The city that welcomed me almost four years ago with two suitcases was now welcoming me back as a senior, surrounded by people who had been part of my journey since the beginning.

We had a packed itinerary for the four days we were there - program activities like visiting the Statue of Liberty, exploring the Met Museum, watching Oh Mary on Broadway, and a group dinner in Hell’s Kitchen. But there was also room in our schedule for wandering, for discovering, for letting the city surprise us.

In my free time, I gravitated toward West Village - one of my forever favorite neighborhoods in New York. I got dinner with some of my scholar friends, and we found ourselves talking about the last four years, about how we all met long before college even started, about how surreal it felt to be here together. Being in the city with the program that brought me to the US was a rare, grounding moment. It felt like the universe gently saying, Look at how far you’ve come.

And just like my first trip, I met up with Jannat again. We walked around West Village, tried Thai food, and ordered a beetroot latte that was far prettier than it was practical. In between laughs and stories, I had a moment of stillness - a tiny pause where I remembered us at twelve, running around Dhaka, imagining our futures with absolutely no idea where life would take us. And here we were: she working on her master’s degree, me getting my dream job. Two Dhaka girls in New York City, living out chapters we didn’t even know to dream about.

Every time I’m in New York, I am reminded of the younger version of myself - the one who hoped loudly and dreamed fearlessly. And this time, walking through the city as a senior in college, with my scholarship cohort by my side and my childhood best friend across the table from me, I realized something simple but profound:New York wasn’t just the beginning of my journey. It is the reminder of everything I’ve built since.

As I look forward to graduation, to new cities, to my career, and to the life that’s waiting for me, I know I’ll keep returning to New York. Not just because it’s beautiful or iconic or cinematic, but because it holds a piece of every version of me - the girl who dreamed of America, the student who first arrived, the scholar who grew, and the woman who is walking confidently into her future.