My experience
I just completed my exchange year in North Carolina, and I’m here to share my experience with ISE. Before starting, I want to clarify that I had a very strong level of English: I completed the IGCSE, which corresponds to a B2/C1 level (upper-intermediate/advanced) of the CEFR, so I was able to understand English very well.
First of all, my host family was incredible, and I am truly grateful to have spent the year with them. However, I cannot say the same about my experience with ISE, especially regarding my area representative. I’ll start by saying that I encountered several issues with this agency even before arriving in the USA. They accepted my application after four months, while some of my friends, who applied through other agencies, were accepted within one or two months. When my placement was finally approved and they informed me of the school I would attend, the only information I received was the name of the school. I had no details about the classes offered or the extracurricular activities available. As a result, I had to choose my classes without any real information. Meanwhile, all my exchange student friends, again, through different agencies, were provided with full lists of available classes, clubs, and sports at their schools. A few days before my arrival (at the end of August), I received a message from my host family saying that the agency had not provided my 11th-grade transcript, which I had submitted at the beginning of June. This is another example of their lack of communication: they didn’t inform me or my local agency; they simply created a problem and made no effort to resolve it. After I arrived, I met my area representative a few days later. She spoke with me for over an hour about the program rules, including some that she seemed to invent. She told me that I was not allowed to have sleepovers at friends’ houses or travel with anyone other than my host family. Interestingly, when I later discussed this with my host family, they told me she had said exactly the opposite to them. However, according to her, she never said any such thing, and I’m apparently either making it up or misunderstanding, perhaps because English is not my first language.
Until now, I have described the minor problems I had with this agency, but now I want to talk about the most serious issue I experienced with them. After not even a month in the USA, my area representative decided to send me a “problem resolution form,” even though neither my host family nor my area representative had ever informed me that there was an ongoing problem. At that point, my family and I decided to report the behavior of both the agency and especially my local coordinator to my Italian agency. They confirmed that most of the things she had written about me in her monthly report were not true and had been completely invented by her. However, nothing happened. When I explained to both agencies that I did not feel comfortable speaking with someone like that and asked to change my area representative, my request was completely ignored. As a result, I had to continue dealing with her for the rest of my exchange year. Every time I had to meet with her, I felt anxious, and every time she invented something against me. In the following months, after our monthly meetings, she texted my host family saying that I was sad, even though I had never said that. She also yelled at me during one meeting because she claimed I was being “rude” to her, when in reality I was simply speaking normally. She never helped me with my documentation either. When I told her that I wanted to participate in athletics at school, she replied that she could not do anything about it and said that joining clubs would be better, since athletics seemed too difficult because of the number of documents required. What is interesting, however, is that she later mentioned in the “problem resolution form” that I was not involved in school activities. Both agencies told me that an Area Representative should be a neutral person between the student and the host family. Unfortunately, mine was absolutely not neutral. In fact, during my last meeting, she told my host family that I had become much better, behaviorally speaking, which clearly showed that she had already formed and shared personal judgments about me.
I could continue describing what this agency, and especially my Area Representative, put me through, but I believe what I have written is more than enough to demonstrate that she was not a neutral person. Moreover, she is not someone who should be working with exchange students from all over the world, as she seems unable to accept and respect cultures different from her own.
I strongly believe that Area Representatives should be selected based on their ability to work with foreign teenagers and genuinely support them throughout their exchange experience. They should not be chosen simply because they were exchange students themselves at the age of 17 and therefore assume they understand every student’s situation.
Finally, good luck to anyone who gets placed in North Carolina or South Carolina with this agency, you will need it.
