Moments Only International Students Can Relate To

By Eunice To on March 26, 2017

Nearly 1 million international students were enrolled in colleges and universities across the United States in the 2014-2015 school year. As part of that 1 million international student population, I am sure there are moments in our daily school lives that only international students could relate to.

To the international students reading this, these are the struggles we all feel when we first encounter American culture and college life; to domestic students, these are the moments when we feel your culture can be really, really weird.

1. Living far away from home

This is something that not just international students, but any student that lives far away from home can relate to. (Here’s a cool Buzzfeed article that sums up what it feels like to be miles apart from home.) I am from Hong Kong, which, according to Google, is almost 8,000 miles in distance. 

Being so far away from home definitely makes me feel lonely in the first place, especially when all my family and friends are living on the other side of the world, but it has changed me in powerful ways. It certainly taught me to appreciate people more than I did before. It is mind-blowing that, even on the far side of the Earth, I could still find a group of people that shares the same interests as I do and that are willing to support each other along this college journey. If there is one thing that took me 18 years and traveling to another country to realize, it is this: people matter.

2. The legal drinking age

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I was so shocked when I learned that the legal drinking age in the United States is 21. This fact is the exact opposite of what I expected from all the partying and drinking scenes I saw in movies and TV shows. It definitely feels weird being able to drink legally and then moving to the States and suddenly becoming underage again!

3. The gap between bathroom stalls

I noticed how most bathrooms in the States, in comparison to other countries, tend to have really low privacy. The bottom gap of the door is so big that it consists of almost 20 percent of the stall height. The side gap makes you occasionally see the person behind the stall as well.

However, I soon learned that it was designed that way for safety reasons. It discourages drug taking or any illegal activities carried out inside bathroom stalls. It even turns out that the only bathrooms where there are absolute privacy in America are the bathrooms in Minneapolis Airport, which is also the place where the Larry Craig scandal happened. There were also instances where alleged terrorists tried to put bombs inside bathroom stalls. So perhaps that is the reason why American bathrooms sacrifice privacy for safety!

4. Finding your home away from home

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No matter how big the culture shock we felt, we all eventually embrace our new life here and find our “home away from home.” Sometimes I ask myself what does it mean to me, to be an international student. Through experiencing a new culture, I learn to appreciate other peoples’ culture as well as my own.

Coming from a sub-tropical climate country, I still remember seeing snow for the first time, catching snowflakes with my hands and snowball fighting with friends in front of my dorm. It reminds me of the reason I applied to colleges in the United States in the first place — it is to learn and grow through traveling around the world. For there is an entire world left for me to learn, and I simply can’t wait to start my journey.

To wrap up my first article ever, here’s a video of more relatable moments us international kids feel on a regular basis!

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