In the past year, Thapa says, the killing of political and military personnel in Kathmandu has been on the rise, bringing the violence out of the rural areas and close to her family in the city.

“I always said with utmost conviction ‘I’m going back to Nepal, and working in my country, and living in my country,’” she says. “But it’s hard, coming to Harvard, and you begin to question. It would be nice to live in a peaceful country where you don’t worry about being shot. You ask, is it reasonable to go back?”

Still, she hopes things will begin to change for the better, and that she might be part of her country’s future.

“Diplomacy really intrigues me. My country needs good diplomacy, and it requires good people to deal with the Maoist problem where diplomacy is lacking,” she says.

Thapa is enrolled in University President Lawrence H. Summers’ freshman seminar on globalization, and hopes she can share a unique perspective coming from a more slowly globalizing country.

“I’ve lived life without technology,” she says. “No cable until 1998, and we only got the Internet in 2000. It still amazes me that I can send my mom e-mails.”

Thapa believes her courses at Harvard and her broadening experiences living in the United States are vital to making her a valuable citizen of Nepal.

“I’m being exposed to lifestyles very different from my own, and exposure is very important. I’m being globalized. Now I have friends from so many different places—India, Mexico, Eastern Europe—I feel more connected to everybody now even than just a month ago,” she says. “This is reality, my world is not just Nepal, it consists of all these other people, you can’t isolate yourself. I’m part of a global community. That’s perspective I need no matter what career I decide on.”

—Staff writer Margaretta E. Homsey can be reached at homsey@fas.harvard.edu.