As an international student from China, culture shock is a real thing that I experienced/still experiencing. Everything people talked about in the video, I had the same feeling and experience at some point during the four years I am here. I actually never thought about why was I here. I knew I came to the States to study. People kept telling me that education is much better in the United States than what we have in China. So I never thought about going back since I was already here, but I did doubt whether I made the right decision to come.
I had the issue of being afraid to speak. The orientation was stressful. I understand that orientation is for people to make friends, to get to know your peers and learn about the school, but forcing the international students (or maybe just me) to do it in just one week is simply too much. I come to be slow in making friends. It takes me time to get comfortable around others. During the whole week, I was literally scared. I was scared of the ice breaking games, I was scared of group discussions, I was even scared of self-introduction. One thing that I remember, I had been told that Americans don’t expect any real answer when they ask “how are you” or “what’s up”, so when I ran into a girl in my orientation group the second week of class, I didn’t respond to her when she asked me “what’s up”. Actually, I didn’t know what was the “correct answer”. She told me one day last year that she though I didn’t like her. The cultural differences, the misunderstandings, make things so difficult for international students.
Comments