For Family Life student Michelle Si Broadbent, the decision to come to the United States from China was not the difficult part. Her parents had studied here and encouraged her to look for opportunities. The difficult part was the transition itself.
“Being an international student is hard,” Broadbent said. “It’s hard coming away from family to a people and culture that you’re not familiar with. Even though so many people were willing to help me, I still had to be willing to take that step.”
After what she terms an academic miracle in high school, Broadbent started to explore the idea of a higher power.
“I wouldn’t be able to do it again. I just knew somebody existed that was helping me. It gave me a feeling that God existed even though I didn’t know who God was.”
Inspired by this feeling, Broadbent later explored religious universities in the United States. After a recommendation from her mother’s friend, Broadbent was drawn to BYU’s honor code.
“I applied to BYU but didn’t get a scholarship,” Broadbent said. “Still my mom was like ‘No you have to go here because of the honor code. Look at how good that is,’ and it’s true. No other school has that. This school really values us becoming better human beings, not just being at school.”
Broadbent credits her professors and mentors for helping her find her major amidst the cultural adjustment.
“In China, we learn about math, geology, physics but we don't really learn about relationships,” Broadbent said. “When I got here and realized there is a whole department dedicated to studying family life, I was like, wow. That's so special. And all the professors are so passionate and they value you as a single person. They want to help you.”
After spending time in Provo and being warmly befriended by professors and classmates, Broadbent started to meet with the missionaries.
She and her family were eventually baptized into The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
As a part of her new faith and in her chosen major, Broadbent learned a lot about learning to love and serve with others.
"Back in China we would stretch ourselves, but as a unit,” she said “It was more competitive because there were only a limited number of spots. Here, we help each other out. With so many papers going on in the lab, we work together. We publish together. I had to make that switch in my mind from ‘I have to be the best’ to ‘we are all going to be the best.’”
Broadbent quickly learned that this cooperative mentality affects every part of her life, including her relationships.
Coming from a divorced family, Broadbent was captivated by her eternal family class and attributes her marriage now to the mindset shifts she made then.
“Before coming to BYU, I only wanted to have a career,” Broadbent reflected. “I wanted to make more money so I could be significant and help others. My parents got divorced so a relationship wasn’t on the top of my list, but coming to BYU changed a lot. I learned about marriages with an eternal view and I saw couples actually using this kind of knowledge. I realized they can actually have a long happy marriage. It’s real.”
Happily married herself, Broadbent wants to use what she has learned at BYU to bless others. She plans to pursue a PhD in counseling psychology to help other families build healthy habits and break the cycle of divorce.
