Losing in a New Life

Education has been very important in shaping of my life. At the beginning, coming to YSA was endless happiness as the USA was an unknown culture and an amazing different world for me. At first, everything was interesting and I was willing to figure it out, but later on changing my habits became tough. I had a hard time experiencing the differences regarding my social life, teacher’s manners and financial issues.

Firstly, losing ability to socialize and almost becoming and asocial person in one of the greatest changes that I have experienced. In the beginning, I was isolated form other students who are native speakers because my English is not as good as a native speaker’s. When I was a DePaul student, native students generally do their activities with their native friends. Also, they don’t want international students to be a part of their group activities. It has made me feel uncomfortable. That does not mean most of the native born people behavior like that, but I have faced these kinds of problems a lot. Besides, I was expecting that every person would be helpful, kind, and friendly. My first day in the school, I was trying to explain myself with body language, and one of the guys who worked there said to me “ we do not understand you. Who can help us to translate what she wants to tell us?” I was surprised because they should have helped me. In addition, they considered me like a native girl in the school even though I was not able to speak fluently. Therefore, I lost my social personality a result of the language differences and communication problems.

Secondly, I lost my efficiency in the class because of the teacher’s manners. In Turkey, student and teacher communication is really amazing and closer than in the USA. Most teachers show interest in students one by one and they have effective contact not only with students, but also with families. In the United States, as far as I have experienced there is different relationship between teacher and student. It is pretty different for me because I did not have close relationship with teachers here like I had in Turkey. When I was learning English in my school, one of my teachers told me after we finished a quarter terms she said that my pronunciation was awful. That kind of behavior would most probably destroy a student’s desire and willingness to learn is why that teacher’s approach has serious significance in my educational life and decreasing my efficiency as a language learner.

Apart from this, being an international student in the USA is another issue that has a big impact on my life. In addition, I have lower living conditions. Since I am an international, and I have to pay threefold of a native student beside the other extra fees. When I paid my college fees, I was disappointed. Because I pay more tuition and other extra fees for the college, I have less money for rent and food. Another point is I cannot take advantage of native students ‘opportunities. For example, it is very hard to get admission with scholarship if you are not foreigner in this country. In addition is that you cannot work off campus, and working opportunities is very limited on campus.

In conclusion, people can get their life by education and as much as they effort, they will getting more. And by the wind of education desire, I have been in USA. While I was trying adapting to a new life, I had tough time. These reasons are diverseness in my social life, the teacher behavior and financial problems. All of these differences enforced me to adapt into new life.