Nine thousand miles separate Chennai, India, from Las Cruces, New Mexico, the distance Priya Kumar, 25, travels to join two of her sisters for a one year graduate program at New Mexico State University. Busy with school work and learning all she can about the United States, it’s in Professor Martin’s year-long Independent Studies course where her comparison-culture learning is put to the forefront, for she must write a 50-page paper about Alexis de Tocqueville’s classic Democracy in America and whether it still rings true nearly two centuries after its first publication. The American Story is often best told from a foreigner’s perspective, and it’s in writing this paper that Priya not only learns about her host country, but more so about herself and the choices she’s faced with. One choice stands above all the others, and it changes her life forever.