A first-generation college student, hours from graduating, dreads leaving school and her faculty mentor for the "real world" and her traditional, Eastern European parents.

While conducting research in the remote country of Keteng, a Stanford grad student hears that another American has entered the country and is challenging the power structures in place.

A Canadian graduate student and his wife are living in France and often socialize with their peers at concerts and dinner parties. They soon make friends with an established novelist, but as the student continues to meet people he begins to question who he can trust and who his real friends are.

A conversation with his former lover opens a man's eyes to his tendency to flee rather than confront the hopeless reality of his own life.

An American expat who lives in Rome struggles to understand his adopted country, especially the Italian language. When he finally finds the right teacher, he is overjoyed, but her unique personal life quickly pervades their lessons and confounds their rapport.

An American student sent to study at Oxford University undergoes a mental crisis as he wavers between fitting in with his English peers and defining himself as an American who deeply loves the Midwest.

A professor finds himself attracted to one of his students, allowing her to skip the final exams - but her resultant grade causes her to lash out at him and reveal harsh truths about his own life that he finds difficult to accept.

An American college student who studies Russian history heads to St. Petersburg at the the end of the Cold War and becomes attracted to her roommate's boyfriend, a former soldier. His stories, along with her interactions with other college students, add to her experience of a tentative social environment in post-war Russia.

Just before an American college student is set to leave for the airport after visiting her extended family in Ethiopia, she realizes her suitcases are too heavy. A fight breaks out between her relatives about what items should travel with her at their behest, versus which ones deserve to be left behind.

Two jobless Harvard graduates who mostly read Marx and do acid reckon with the changing times since their days of revelry at university.