Summary Of The Continuous Process Of Cultural Adjustment

Nowadays, there are millions of international students in the United States who are pursuing college degrees that will help them achieve their future goals and may give them the opportunity of finding a good position in the international job market. However, it’s not an easy task for these students to adapt in a new environment because of many of challenges they may face and learning how to adjust themselves to college life. Some of the challenges they may go through involve overcoming cultural, social, and academic differences in order to succeed in college. It is obvious that these issues would affect them academically and psychologically as well. Therefore, it is important for international students to understand how adaptation in particular would help them to meet the academic requirements of American universities.
In the article ‘’The Continuous Process of Cultural Adjustment’’, Smith talks about his personal experience as a graduate student in United States and what are the strategies he uses in order to adapt.
One of the strategies he uses is meeting with an international student consoler whenever he had the chance. As he says ‘’The counselor helped me realize that Americans also experience cultural shock and deal with cultural adjustment when they move from their hometowns to other parts of the country’’. According to what he says, it is clear that he now knows that he is not the only one experiencing a cultural shock. Also, sharing his issues with someone who is willing to help is one way to overcome the cultural adjustment
struggle. Similarly, in my university which is CSUSM there is a large number of advisors and fellow students who are there to advise new students and make sure that they are in contact of every student. As a freshman I had a hard time adjusting to a new education system and I couldn’t catch up with these changes until I started attending some of the workshops that was designed specially for international students. In one of these workshops I have learned many strategies related to students success like preparing for exams, team work, and using the writing center. Moreover, I make sure that I schedule an appointment with my instructor whenever I needed more explanation about a certain point because the class time is limited and the instructor can’t focus his attention on every student in the classroom. In addition, to meet with course work deadline students need to understand the importance of time management. For example, they have use a planner in order to organize their weekly schedule and remember what assignment they should work on. Also, they should give organization more attention because they may lose their focus if they can’t give each task enough time. For that, both time management and organization are important for student success and without them it is hard to meet the requirements of an American university.
As an international student on his first year in college, I would say that I belong to the community of international students who face many challenges as they pursue higher education. These challenges go around cultural, educational, and social differences that every international student may go through during his college experience. For example, some students may feel overwhelmed by the much of assignments and activities they have to do in order to learn. Also, they face the challenge of learning in a new culture as well as leaving the classroom to find a foreign environment surrounding them.