Learning Journal #5 (105)

[Minyao Li]

I can resonate with a lot of things that have been mentioned in the video. For example, the newness that came at the beginning when I first came to the U.S and the school. I felt excited about almost everything. But then as the newness went away, I started to feel difficult about dealing with academic and social life. I felt alien from this very different world than my home. As a lot of people said in the video, the first few weeks were very tough and were packed. I had to get used to everything within a short amount of time. I had to spend two or three times more effort on the work that U.S students, etc. I was stressed out. But then, as I interacted with professors more, tried to take the initiative to reach out to other people, and got more involved in class, things started getting better. In small schools like U of Richmond, I think it’s really an advantage to have a small community where I can always find help from my professors and faculties. There people who are less interested in me and my culture, but there still are a lot of people who cares about me and my culture, who want to talk to me and get to know me, which has been a great encouragement in my life here at Richmond. One thing that I think would be great is the host family program. It could be a great support to international student as one of the girl talked in the video. We don’t have host family program that has student actually live in the host family now, instead, we have host family that could take student to dinner, local places, holidays, etc. It has less interaction with the host family, but still a good way to get familiar with Richmond and in some way, the American culture.