There is no easy answer. I see a lot of other people have responded with very long lists of every sort of food, location, event, and custom you can possibly expect to encounter while studying in America. While I’m sure some of this advice is helpful, it’s too scattered and overwhelming. Instead, I’ll offer my observation on the biggest single change Chinese students experience when moving to America.
Based on my experiences helping Chinese students get into American colleges and knowing Chinese students when I went to the University of Chicago, the biggest adjustment Chinese students go through is gaining personal freedom, and I don’t mean that in a political sense (though America does have far more free speech than China).
What I mean is that as a college student living far away from your home and parents, you will have vastly more control over your life than ever before. You (mostly) control your class schedule, you control when you do homework, you control when you go to bed, when you play video games, when and what you eat, who you spend time with, where you travel, and pretty much everything else in your life. Any success or failure you experience will be entirely due to your own actions.
This can be kind of scary, but it can also be greatly rewarding. A lot of students have difficulty with the adjustment process. Many Chinese students especially are used to highly structured lives where the vast majority of their actions every day are controlled by their schools or parents, but suddenly that control has diminished to almost nothing. Learning basic scheduling can be a challenge, but most people ultimately find it more rewarding.
So don’t worry about the differences between American and Chinese food, or the language barrier, or any of that stuff. Instead focus on how you are going to control your own life. Prepare yourself for the experience of having personal responsibility. This adjustment will be far more significant than learning to eat hamburgers or watching American tv shows.
|
转播
