International Student Finds Home at Delta Tau Delta

Manjul Bhusal Sharma ’16 join the Chi Chapter of Delta Tau Delta as an international student in 2012.

“Delts were the most diverse fraternity in the Fall of 2012. They had people from almost every continent studying all different subjects at Kenyon, getting together to have fun and learn from each other. The brothers were welcoming and warm to me and I felt at home in no time,” he says.

During his college experience, Sharma formed countless fond memories, but there are two that particularly stand out.

“I had always been impressed by the Senior Delts (Class of 2013), and during their senior week, I got to hang out with them, because I was on campus that summer for physics research,” he says. “During that time, these guys, most of them champion varsity swimmers, taught me how to swim and told me all the fun stories from their time at Kenyon. I, in return, got to cook them some Nepali food. I am forever thankful to them…thanks to them I can swim now!”

“My second-favorite memory is about Kenyon’s casino night,” he continues. “Every February, there used to be this casino night, thanks to Phebruary Funds. As a statistician fascinated with counting cards, I got together with a bunch of brothers and came up with a probabilistic model which would give us a significant advantage on the floor. We ended up winning the lion’s share of the visa card giveaways, which funded a lot of barbeques for the rest of the semester.”

After graduation, Sharma began working with Morningstar, Inc., an investment research firm in Chicago. He is on the corporate credit research team, where he does valuation and analysis of corporate bond issuers across multiple industry sectors. He’s currently prepping for the CFA Level II exam.

He still keeps in touch with a lot of his brothers, and Brother Jacob Pleasure ’15 was a groomsman in his wedding, while many others were in attendance to celebrate his marriage to his wife, also a Kenyon graduate.

He tries to see his brothers in person as much as possible, and in the last month alone, he’s caught up with Michael Marting ’14, Alex O’Connor ’17 and Henry Burbank ’16.

At the end of the day, Sharma says Delta Tau Delta most importantly taught him not to judge a book by its cover, a skill that still serves him today.

“[Delta Tau Delta] taught me to try to see the good that is present in the people around us and to try to embody those in my own life. I remember this sentence from one of our documents that read something like ‘whatever your strengths, the fraternity now claims right to them and whatever your weaknesses, the fraternity now demands that, with the help of your brothers, you get rid of them.’ This has always struck a chord with me and so, whenever I meet new people, I take genuine interest in them and try to learn whatever it is that they can tell me about. So, to this day, this ability to network with people almost effortlessly has impacted my life positively,” he says.