Introduction As an international student, naturally, I fall within the group of minority students in my educational institution. This population is often underrepresented and underserved despite the unique challenges they face while trying to acclimate to their new environments (Ecochard and Fotheringham, 2018). My status as an international student puts me at a disadvantage over other students who are accustomed to the learning environment. However, drawing from my foreign status, I come with a unique set of experiences and insights about the educational setting that could improve performance. Key Considerations This unique approach to interacting with the learning environment stems from my view of the student learning environment from the outward-in, as opposed to the inwards-out method used by resident students. Having an objective view of the learning environment is a unique way of identifying issues or opportunities for student relationships in the learning environment that an insider would not have. This nuanced understanding of the learning environment influenced the development and design of my research project. Particularly, it affected how data would be collected and interpreted. Key considerations made when developing and designing the project were resource and time allocations. Notably, time was a more significant consideration because resource limitations could be solved through partnerships and collaborations, but time lost cannot be recouped. Given that I adopted the observational view of analyzing the research problem, I had a rare opportunity of making changes to the process design based on observations that I made from the process. The goal of doing so was to make the research process more relevant and appropriate to the study context. Particularly, looking at the topic from a “foreigner’s” perspective gave me multiple perspectives for developing different parts of the research plan. My interest in the topic stems from my interaction with people across different levels of learning. I find that most students want to live harmoniously with one another and are eager to change their thinking as they learn more about each other. Therefore, any contributions toward making the student body work well and more efficiently instantly drew me to the research topic. How people relate to one another has always intrigued me as a young person, and I have held on to the same curiosity even in my adult years. This area of research interest informed my topic, which largely focuses on improving interpersonal relationships. I find that the education setting is the best way to explore this research topic because of the diversity of people who live and work in higher education institutions. Therefore, it offers an effective and controlled environment for investigating the research issue. As pointed out by Xu (2021) about the experiences of Chinese learners in international universities, the higher education setting creates a simulated environment for analyzing real-world problems. This environment also influenced the design planning process because it was meant to maximize outcomes. While designing the research plan, I had to internalize the possibility that cert