The wealth of information accessible via the electronic autobahn is one reason why many international students say it is an indispensable resource for keeping track of goings-on at home.

Pawel Dobrowolski'95, a Polish student who attended high school in Australia, says he subscribes to two daily newspapers from Poland over e-mail: the Gazetta and the Donosy.

"It's very convenient," Dobrowolski says. "I used to go to the Widener on Saturday mornings and spend a couple of hours reading the paper. But there was a two-week backlog; they weren't up-to-date. Now I get news on time."

Indeed, certain electronic newspapers are sent out before their more traditional printed counterparts.

"I am on the mailing list where I get news from Greece," Kourtidis says.

"The e-mail paper, cosmos, is from a real newspaper--Eleftherotypia. The interesting thing is, I get news 12 hours before the real paper is published," he adds.

For Pakistani student Hasnain Aslam '96, an Engineering and Economics concentrator living in adams House, the Internet provides specialized sports coverage.

"Cricket is a sport that's very popular in Pakistan, but there's no news available here. When I want to follow an important match, I log onto the IRC and get a running commentary."

Indeed, the broad spectrum of subject-specific information accessible over the Internet makes it a productive research resource, say several students.

Dobrowolski says he used the Internet to compile information for a research paper he had to write.

"I had to do a paper on Competition and Telecoms for an economics class at the Sloan School at MIT," Dobrowolski says. "On a daily basis, I read three news groups devoted to telecoms. It was definitely useful, I couldn't have done my paper without it."

And Kourtidis says the Internet was a valuable research aid for his independent study project on medical imaging.

"The advantage of using the Internet is that you can find things you want really fast," he says. "I didn't have to go to a library at say MIT to get slides or graphic images presented at a medical conference, for example."

No Place Like Home

For some homesick international students, the Internet is a readily-accessible forum for discussing occurrences abroad.