The Red and Black

Issue date: 4/28/08 Section: Opinions

CHING ER

If you have studied abroad, you would have experienced the hard time to adjust to the new life.

Now, let me bring you to a perspective - being an international student at the University, I am a transfer student from Malaysia and plan to complete my undergraduate program here.

Coming here to study without knowing anyone, I am encountering many unexpected challenges.

Language is definitely a barrier in many aspects of my life here.

When people mumble or talk quickly, I cannot understand a single word even if I listen with both ears.

I cannot count how many awkward situations I have had when I answered things that were not relevant to the questions people have asked.

During classes, sometimes I have a hard time jotting down notes when the lecturers talk fast.

Apart from that, the language barrier also makes me a very slow reader.

The time I spend reading an article is two times longer than a normal student. I have to work twice as hard as others to keep up with the readings for my classes.

The same thing goes for my writing skills. I need a lot more time to write papers. I am glad the University has excellent writing tutoring services; nonetheless, the services emphasize they will not proofread papers. Consequently, I never know who to ask to proofread my papers if I want to turn in good papers.

Another huge challenge is the learning environment.

I am not used to giving opinions in classes. I have never had discussion sessions in my school life before; thus, I am very bad in speaking up in classes even though it is a piece of cake for local students. I am intimidated to speak in public since I need time to put my ideas into good English sentences.

Apart from that, I am very poor in thinking of a topic thoroughly and coming up with constructive ideas. Since many of my classes have class participation marks, I have to gather my guts to raise my hand and say something.

Although I have made the effort to raise my hand, my mind always goes completely blank, and I end up saying short phrases that do not make much sense. Apparently my bad class participation performance affects my grade.

The education system here is very different for me as well. In my country, we have a fixed schedule of classes you are required to take for your major, and you do not need to worry about not getting classes.

Although I already knew I had to take liberal arts and sciences in order to graduate from a degree program in the U.S., I did not expect that I would have to deal with so many problems when registering for classes.

I have to spend so much time on OASIS checking the availability of classes, ranking classes, getting permission of department and making the best schedule to squeeze in all the classes I want to take.

Furthermore, I have a hard time dealing with the prerequisite system. Seeing that I have taken some of the introduction classes back in my country, I want to take some upper level classes.

However, the prerequisite system restrains me from doing so. In addition, I want to take certain classes that are important for me to apply for internships, but I cannot take them, as I do not have the prerequisite.

Consequently, I have to take the lower level classes first and wait until next year to take classes I want. At this point, I wonder if this is one of the reasons I failed to get internships or not, though I have applied for many.

Adding to the challenges of school life here, paying out-of-state tuition fees while you are not from a well-off family is another bitter experience. Since there are almost no scholarships offered to international undergraduate students, my parents have to use every single resource to gather $30,000 per year to support me.

Now that the economy is very critical and I am from a developing country, sometimes I think I will have to withdraw from studying here to lessen my family's burden.

However, it is better for me to finish my studies here and return all the goodness my parents have given me in the future.

As stated in the law of evolution - the fittest survive. The environment will not change for an individual; on the contrary, the individual has to adapt to the environment to survive.

I will take all the challenges as a rite of passage, learn from failure and be tougher when facing other challenges.

- Ching Er is a sophomore from Malaysia majoring in advertising.

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