Many students think of study abroad life as full of excitement.
After the dream comes true, many of them find that dreams and reality are different, and they cannot adapt to the foreign life.
Jiawei Bao is from China and is studying mechanical engineering at ISU.
He prepared for study abroad for a whole year, but after seven days of being in America, he got so frustrated with his daily life and lost a lot of weight.
He couldn’t adapt to an American diet, so he only ate instant noodles as meals for a week.
He said, “Eating the same unhealthy food for seven days in a row almost drove me insane. ”
In fact, this is a common problem for a lot of students in the beginning of their overseas life.
Bao said the way he overcame this problem is by making some friends who are more familiar with the town. He asked them to recommend some restaurants that serve hometown dishes.
Another major issue is that the style of the universities in the United States can be quite different from other countries, especially Asian countries.
Students in Asia are often really quiet and inactive in classes; however, in the U.S., professors are far more interactive.
American classrooms emphasize training students’ creative thinking and practical ability, therefore, they feature interaction with professors and students in the classroom, and they encourage students to express their views on issues.
Study groups are not very common for students from Asia, which has been proved to be the one of the most efficient ways to study.
Ying Zhang, 22, studying accounting at ISU, said, “When I first came to the class I just stared at my notebook and took notes. I did not answer any questions professor asked, and was really shy when we had a group discussion. After barely talking to my classmates for half the semester, I finally decided to make some changes on the style of my study skills. I started to ask questions after the class, and formed a little three-person study group.”
Next thing on our list is that students who come study in the U.S. are becoming younger and younger, so their safety awareness is kind of weak.
Their self-care and self-reliance ability is relatively worse.
Xinyi Zou studies chemical engineering at ISU. She admitted that the ability to communicate with people and to adapt to this society is relatively low, which led directly to a helpless situation when she encounters problems or disputes and conflicts occur with others.
She said, “I still remembered the first time I had to ask my neighbor to quiet down a little bit, because I was studying for my exams while he played his rock and roll music so loud. I start to feel so afraid and ended up calling the police for helping dealing with my neighbor. ”
Last but not least are the medical issues.
Baitong Chen, studying Chemical Engineering, suggested that after arriving in the U.S., students should try to be familiar with the environment around them as soon as possible, including the building alarm, roadside help, or free telephone.
Baitong told a story about when he had his first late night emergency, “ He explained,
“When I fell out from a tall chair and broke my foot. At that time, I did not know the exact location of the emergency room of the closest hospital to me.”
“After rolling around on the floor for almost 15 minutes, I finally had to call 911 to ask for help.”
The crucial part about being an international student and handling such struggles is to know how to reach the school authorities. The emergency alarm and emergency rooms locations to avoid panic in an emergency will help you when you are in a crisis because different places, like DMACC, have different protocols for emergencies.
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