Immigrant Student Stress

Causes of Stress Among Immigrant Students Most immigrant students have stress in college. The stress comes from their different cultural background, financial problems and family. First, immigrant students have stress because of their different culture background. For most immigrant students, their first language is not English. They have weakness in English, so it is difficult for them studying and communicating with others. They have difficulty reading textbooks, doing assignments and listening in class. For example, in the specialized subject, like accounting, students do not know the specialized words for accounting, so they can not understand what the teacher say in class. Thus they need to spend much time than native students finishing an assignment. If they do not study hard, they will fall behind others and fail in tests. Also, immigrant students feel pressure when they try to communicate with others. For instance, some Chinese students worry about making the presentation in a teamwork. Because they do not know how to express their ideas and opinions. They lack confidence in speaking English. On the other hand, immigrant students come from different countries. They have
different lifestyle. The food in the school’s cafeteria are different from their homeland. Some students complain about eating fast food. They feel unhappy eating food which they do not like. We know that food can affect people’s mood and mind, so this factor may increase stress of studying for them. Next, immigrant students experience pressure because of financial problems.
When they immigrate to Canada, they need to pay a lot of money for renting an apartment, buying increasely high-priced food and paying transportation fees. Renting an apartment at least costs one thousand dollars. If students live far from school, they have to spend twenty-five dollars per week travelling to school. Especially they have to pay high tuition and textbook fees. For example, in the two-year program of accounting, they need to spend eight thousand and five hundred on tuition fees. It is a big pressure for most of immigrant students. In order to pay these fees, some students borrow money or apply OSAP to support their studying. Also these loans put pressure on immigrant
students. Finally, pressure on immigrant students comes from family. Many students are married. They need to take care of children or do housework besides studying. So they do not have enough time to study. Some female students say they must go home to pick up their children at 5:00 pm everyday, even if they have many assignments to do. Although they would like to study in the library or discuss problems with classmates in computing commons,they can not stay at that time. They need to cook and do housework. So they just study in the evening and spend only five or six hours sleeping. If students spend a lot of time looking after their families, they can not focus on studying. As a result they experience high psychological pressure. In addition, many student go to school in order to get a secure job. Families lay their great hope on immigrant students. Parents hope they can study hard and achieve a good job to support families. These hopes have put pressure on students when studying. In conclusion, the different cultural background, financial problems and family are three causes of stress experienced by immigrant students. In order to accomplish studying successfully, they must overcome these stresses and fight hard to earn a bright future for themselves.