Thin Wyut Yi Nan ’27 lived what she describes as a “very privileged life” in her home country of Myanmar, a developing southeast Asian country. Nan attended an international high school, enjoyed private transportation and ate at expensive restaurants. However, her life was turned upside down two years ago when political upheaval with the overthrow of the country’s democracy by the military in a coup d’etat thrusted Myanmar into political upheaval. The rest of Nan’s time in her home country was more different than she ever imagined.
“When I left Myanmar, it was kind of like I knew that I’m not going to call this place my home in the same way anymore, because the next time I come back it’s either going to be for a temporary visit or at most [a few] months at a time,” said Nan.
“It’s never going to be like I’m going to work here — I’m not going to start a family here and I’m not going to build a life in the place that I’ve called home for 18 years,” she said. “I still struggle with that.”
When Nan left, Myanmar was more than two years into the coup that began on Feb. 1, 2021. The country appointed its first democratically-elected leader in 2015 following decades of military rule. It had been successfully, if slowly, democratizing for nearly six years when the military junta overthrew the democratic government and reinstated its regime.
“Although I’ve heard my mom and my grandma talk about military rule, I never thought that it’d happen in my lifetime, so it was kind of jarring,” said Nan. “I never thought it was real until it happened — I was hoping that it would just blow over in a few days.”
When Nan was a sophomore in high school at Yangon Academy International School, the military arrested the president, Win Myint, along with the State Counselor of Myanmar Aung San Suu Kyi and other government officials, seizing power of the country. Much of the nation shut down, public schools closed, travel was restricted and a curfew was imposed, but Nan said her experience was different from that of her peers.
“As someone who had the opportunity to live in a gated community, it still affected my daily life, but not in the same way that it affected other people of Yangon who [don’t] have the same privilege, who can’t afford private school, so their education was stopped for two years,” Nan said.
Even after students who were enrolled in public, government-funded schools were able to resume their education, many public school teachers had left the workforce in protest of the military rule. Although Nan also experienced losing teachers following the coup, she was able to continue her education virtually at her private international school.
“I feel like my education continued on, not smoothly, because a lot of foreign teachers had to leave — why would they stay there, right? Everyone left,” said Nan. “Everyone around me is trying to leave…it’s kind of mentally exhausting at first, but you just try to make the best you can [of it].”
Now at Smith, Nan is planning on majoring in quantitative economics with a concentration in global financial institutes, with a minor in linguistics. She knew she wanted to go to a historically women’s college, but decided on Smith in hopes that it would provide her with an education that would allow her to one day work in the finance industry.
“I decided that I want to put my academics first, in a place [where my education can] truly flourish and I feel like the connections and the relationships I can make at Smith … are just going to be exponentially better than any other co-ed school could give me,” Nan said.
Nan came to America with her parents, who moved to Utah where friends of her family had already settled. Her family and friends created a community that gave Nan a founding despite having left their home country.
“It’s easy to find a family and have that feeling of home, which is so funny, but Utah does still give me a feeling of home because all of my family is there — my parents, my dad’s best friend’s whole family is there,” Nan said. “You go into their home and it’s just like Yangon — it’s Americanized — but there’s the Burmese paintings, everyone’s talking in Burmese, we’re eating Burmese food every day.”
Although her family relocated to the United States, Nan knew many Burmese people who moved to Thailand when the coup forced lots of citizens to leave the country, making Thailand almost a secondary community for citizens of Myanmar. Nan plans to live in Thailand, too because it’s as close as she can be to home.
“Everyone’s just hoping that all the young people can leave [the country],” Nan said. “But then it’s also like, if all of us leave, then what’s going to happen to Myanmar? That’s a question I still have.”
