By Zainab Richardson | Staff Writer
On paper, the freshman experience is a universal rite of passage. It’s all some cycle of friendship highs and lows, missing home and being glad you went away and learning how to live a life unlike anything you’ve done before. While all freshmen suffer challenges, international freshmen navigate a hidden curriculum of cultural and social life that their domestic peers don’t.
Walking through any freshman door during the first week, you will see the anticipation. But under that, there is an uneven playing field that goes unnoticed. Universities pride themselves on global enrollments and the way they cater to freshmen, but that could not be further from the truth. International freshmen start further back from where the race begins. They go through academic, social and cultural stress unlike their peers.
Academically, the challenge is rooted in a clash between educational styles. While most international students are used to memorization and constant exams, Western students are more accustomed to analyzing the material and debating based on opinions. An example of this is that some West African countries require students to take the WAEC (West African Examinations Council), a memorization-based exam.
Another prominent issue is the language barrier. Many international students learn English before coming to universities in the Western world, but that is not where the problem lies. Students learn from a more professional standpoint, leading to struggles in social settings because people typically use slang and informal speech that went untaught.
Both international and domestic freshmen struggle with being away from home. The difference is that international freshmen also deal with social isolation. While their domestic peers can go home during major breaks, they go back home once or twice a year. The time difference also plays a huge part in that isolation, considering you cannot contact people at home as easily.
Universities do try to cater to the needs of international students by offering more diverse meals, but it only makes matters worse. Going to the dining hall and having a dish from your culture that tastes flawed only adds to the bitter reminder that you are far from home.
Universities tend to put international students and domestic students together as roommates so that they can ideally learn about each other’s cultures. That can lead to greater issues of international students facing discrimination and feeling uncomfortable in what is supposed to be their safe space.
In the end, saying that a freshman’s experience is universal may be half right, but it does not acknowledge that not all the struggles are. So, the goal should not just be to increase the global diversity count but also to put measures in place to accommodate those unique struggles.
