Substantial research emphasizes recruitment and retention of international students over their lived experiences. This qualitative study employed a sociocultural lens to explore five international graduate students’ lived experiences in the United States and their postgraduation plans. Findings suggest that international graduate students navigate a World that encompasses individual worlds that revolve around challenges, opportunities, and imagined communities. I draw on Gee’s (2014) notion of capitalizing a word normally written in lower case to make clear two differing connotations of the word “world.” I discuss implications for higher education host institutions and their offices of international education.

中文翻译：

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国际学生世界内部

大量研究强调招募和留住国际学生而不是他们的生活经历。这项定性研究采用社会文化视角来探索五名国际研究生在美国的生活经历和他们的毕业计划。调查结果表明，国际研究生在一个包含个人世界的世界中航行，这些个人世界围绕着挑战、机遇和想象的社区。我借鉴了 Gee (2014) 将通常以小写字母书写的单词大写的概念，以明确“世界”一词的两种不同含义。我讨论了对高等教育主办机构及其国际教育办公室的影响。