Student and Family Pressure

Huong Le
February 10, 2014
Second draft

The pressures of being a student.
Have you ever gotten mad for being a student? In fact, being a student is having a lot of fun, lots of wonderful and useful things to learn. However, it is not easy to be as most of people think, especially you are an international student. Living and studying in a foreign country may cause some pressures from many sources. There are three main pressures that most of international students have are financial pressure, social pressure, and family pressure.
First, finance is the first thing that students always worry about it. It concludes tuition, rent, and money for personal things such as food, clothing, or textbooks. It is easy to see that the more you move up your level, the more tuition you pay. For example, my tuition at high school in Vietnam was about 500 dollars for a quarter, but it increases to 3000 dollars at college in the US. In addition, the cost for rent in here is so high. In Seattle, I have to pay about 400 dollars for a month and maybe it will increase in many years. Living far away my country means I have to buy everything news from clothing, food to vehicle. Unfortunately, they are not cheap as my hometown, so I always contemplate deciding buying something. All of them about finance make me worry, I scare that my parent can’t pay for me in many years.
Another pressure of students is social problems. It is quite difficult for international students to make friends in the new country. Many students from different countries study together in the same school. Therefore, differences about language, culture, or circumstance are obstacles for making friends. For example, my new Thai friend told me that she had problem in making friends with foreign students because of her bad English. She was so ashamed when she talked face to face with someone, and it took about three months to fit in. Some students also have bad habit like they compare with each other everything from vehicles, clothing, and phones to money. It makes many students think about what they have and don’t have. So far, they won’t focus their studies, but they pay more money for buying something they don’t have.
The last pressure is family. Almost parents want their children have a good grade, involve activities at school to get experience, or have to choose a common major…However, they don’t really understand what their children like or what subject they are good at. For instance, my parents graduated in universities, so both of them want me complete my studies better than them. It is hard to explain why they make me stress. Although they don’t talk about my studies too much, I know they want me succeed to many. Sometimes I am very stressful because of them; however, I think that I should have responsibility to make them satisfy and happy because of large amount of money they’ve paid for me to study.
In conclusion, the pressures of being a student overall is not easy, but hard. But we, the student, overtime have come to accept the pressures that we have accumulated and basically found different ways around them. If you take it serious that you will have a big pressure. Try to think over the positive aspects of being a student. Essentially the pressures of being a student are life itself; which is associated with financial pressure, social problems pressure, and family pressure.