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40% of foreign students in the US have no close American friends on campus

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Re: 40% of foreign students in the US have no close American friends on campus

#3
It takes a lot of courage to put yourself in a strange environment, away from familiar comforts and friends and family, into the care of strangers, to learn about a million faults they have, and then learn to love them anyway, and, most importantly, to really allow the experience to change you.

Re: 40% of foreign students in the US have no close American friends on campus

#4
post #2

blah blah blah three stereotypical differences between america and africa, china, middle east, blah blah students have to deal with this blah blah. Why is this on HN?

"Anything that good hackers would find interesting. That includes more than hacking and startups. If you had to reduce it to a sentence, the answer might be: anything that gratifies one's intellectual curiosity.:

Re: 40% of foreign students in the US have no close American friends on campus

#5
post #4
post #2

blah blah blah three stereotypical differences between america and africa, china, middle east, blah blah students have to deal with this blah blah. Why is this on HN?

"Anything that good hackers would find interesting. That includes more than hacking and startups. If you had to reduce it to a sentence, the answer might be: anything that gratifies one's intellectual curiosity.:

Why would good hackers find this article interesting? What do you find intellectually curious about it?

Re: 40% of foreign students in the US have no close American friends on campus

#6
post #5
post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Anything that good hackers would find interesting. That includes more than hacking and startups. If you had to reduce it to a sentence, the answer might be: anything that gratifies one's intellectual curiosity.:

Why would good hackers find this article interesting? What do you find intellectually curious about it?

Perhaps there are people here who have experienced this themselves? Also, the fact that it's being upvoted is evidence it's of interest to the community.

Re: 40% of foreign students in the US have no close American friends on campus

#7
As a former international student, the first year was incredibly lonely as I used to be a deep introvert. The article mentions some of the obstacles but perhaps one of biggest ones is being able to communicate well with Americans. I used to be incredibly anxious about buying groceries simply because I talked very fast English with a heavy accent. I could talk but not communicate; which means that I could convey facts, but I couldn't strike up a conversation with a stranger, or make a joke. I didn't understand American sarcasm and would be alarmed by some of the things Americans said. And this is despite me having pretty good knowledge of English; I can only imagine how hard it must be for Chinese/Korean etc. students.

The best thing that happened to me was to get an internship in a company where my team was composed mostly of Americans. I learned how to talk slower and more importantly, slowly understood sarcasm as well. Perhaps most Americans don't realize just how much of a shared culture is needed for immigrants to understand before they can communicate effectively.

Re: 40% of foreign students in the US have no close American friends on campus

#8
post #7

As a former international student, the first year was incredibly lonely as I used to be a deep introvert. The article mentions some of the obstacles but perhaps one of biggest ones is being able to communicate well with Americans. I used to be incredibly anxious about buying groceries simply because I talked very fast English with a heavy accent. I could talk but not communicate ; which means that I could convey fact…

in my experience the split has to do more with east/west cultures than nationalities. americans are friendly and like to joke around, be sarcastic, and not take things too seriously unless you are dealing with personal safety or a lot of money. if you aren't like that, you're going to have a really hard time.

for example, in the first couple of years, a spanish (from spain) person is going to do a lot better than a russian.

Re: 40% of foreign students in the US have no close American friends on campus

#9
post #6
post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why would good hackers find this article interesting? What do you find intellectually curious about it?

Perhaps there are people here who have experienced this themselves? Also, the fact that it's being upvoted is evidence it's of interest to the community.

To play Devil's Advocate, there is no downvote option so it's hard to gauge just how much folks care about a given article.
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