The Struggles and Challenges Faced by Immigrants and College Students

Every single person should stand on their own foot and take responsibility for themselves. This is the important in our lives, because it will be the output of our future. For most students, entering college is a terrifying and an exciting experience. Everyone encounter a lot of struggles and frustrations; however, people still learned from it which made them more matured, stronger, and successful person. Some of those struggles might have changed who we are or how we later approached life.

Immigrants and College students struggle to conform to a new environment due to acquiring deeper knowledge in a given language, facing challenges and experiencing failure. The difficulties in learning other language for immigrants and college students is dealing with challenging situation in understanding. In the article “Where Are You From?” in where Patricia Park is having a hard time in communicating to others when she went to Korea, because of her American accent and her lack of knowledge in Korean language, Park expressed how she’s frustrated about her language, “Whenever I communicated in our “native” tongue, the South Koreans laughed at my antiquated vocabulary (I peddled words like apothecary, outhouse) and my distinctly American cadence (I spoke in iambic pentameter).

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” (Park 107). She is treated in Korea just as same as when she is in the New York and Park felt like outsider in her own home country. In “College Fear Factor” Kyra, and Linda defines how they need to give more time in English for them to understand it well.

Kyra noted, “I Just had a fear of English, like this total fear factor” (51), perhaps she is struggling in English that’s why she had fear on it. Similarly, Linda had a hard time especially in writing, she dropped the course for several times. Linda explained, “The only reason why I waited because I hate writing. I was afraid of it – I think I’ve always had that problem.” (51). Kyra, Linda and Patricia come from different background, but share similarities in their experience with the struggles of learning another language. Students or Immigrants need to get out from their comfort zone and become independent.

They’re experiencing struggle and frustration because of the challenges they need to face. In “Me Talk Pretty One Day”, it’s a challenge for Sedaris who is a forty-one of age who decided to go back to school again to learn to speak French fluently. Sedaris observed, “Regardless of their nationalities, everyone spoke what sounded to me like excellent French. Some accent were better than others, but the students exhibited an ease and confidence that I found intimidating.” (101). He feels frighten with his classmate around him that made him uncomfortable. In “The College Fear Factor”, Suzanne who having difficulty in school, particularly in doing writings. Suzanne said, “Oh, high school teachers [sigh). I wrote two papers, I think, and that was it. And we never had to edit or anything. Yeah I knew I was going to have a very hard time.” (51) Sedaris and Suzanne have different situation, but they have the same experience who had challenges and get over it.

Adjustments when being in another place is very scary, because of experiencing failures. In situations like these, people are afraid of being humiliated when doing and saying something wrong. For example, the article “College Fear Factor” where Jenn and Eva attempting to quit at the start of semester, because of the work load that they never have in high school. Making mistakes is a big deal for most of us. As it is hard to feel like we did something wrong, this is a feeling that stays with us for a very long time. In “Me Talk Pretty One Day”, Sedaris was avoiding involvement with people from school, because he thought that everything he would say was wrong. Sedaris noted, “now I was convinced that everything I said was wrong.” (104). He doesn’t believe his self anymore because of the fear he felt, and he avoids others. Jenn, Eva and Sedaris situation demonstrates having a connection in their reasons why they want to quit school, due to the loss of hope in understanding the language, not believing in themselves and thinking that they are not going to make it through school. Everyone makes mistakes and it causes failures in this world, whether it’s student or not, it’s just a fact of life.

Everybody just went from failure, but made mistake after mistake, but the biggest thing about doing wrong, is learning from it and not do the same thing again, and just gaining knowledge about something. Like the Students, Sedaris and Park who had lot of trials faced before achieving success; however, they still attained the success and realize that they can make it because of the perseverance to meet their goals and know where they really belong. You may even start to think about your future so be ready, because it is not easy to go thru. Just like them maybe you have the same experience that you think you can’t make it, success is not a matter of luck or accident or being in the right place at the right time, it depends to the person handling the situations. Always remind yourself, “I won’t quit and I will succeed”.