How to Succeed as an International Student in the U.S. - Part 2
Photo by Prateek Katyal on Unsplash
Last time, I published part 1 of my international student success blog series highlighting 3 of the 6 specific skills you’ll need to succeed in the U.S. In that post we covered networking, proactivity, and confidence. If you’d like to go back and review that blog before reading on, or if you missed it, you can click here.
In part 2 we’ll be covering the final 3 skills you’ll need to develop to ensure your success in the U.S.
These 3 skills are:
Knowing When to Seek Help
Relationship Building
Public Speaking
So without further ado, let’s dive right in!
Seeking Help - What’s Your Plan?
I frequently see and hear from international students that one area they tend to struggle with is learning when to seek help from their peers, professors, or academic professionals.
Although this is a common problem for international students, it’s also a very common problem for students overall, regardless of their background.
It’s challenging because admitting you need to seek out help means admitting that you need help in the first place, and no one wants to admit that they can’t figure things out and succeed on their own.
The truth is, no one can actually succeed on their own. The idea that you can is not only unrealistic, it’s impossible.
Once we realize that, asking for help becomes much easier. Once you notice that no mature person would judge individuals for asking for help, asking for help enhances your chances of success, and that it helps you grow as an individual by learning from your peers and professors, you’ll appreciate its benefits over your initial uneasiness.
The only other issue is identifying when we actually need to reach out for support. You don’t want to simply assume you need help because something becomes difficult. Just like we grow by asking for help, we also grow by learning from our mistakes and challenging ourselves when things get tough. So, here’s my advice to you:
The easiest way to identify when you need to ask for help is to come up with a plan. Identify your biggest areas of success and your biggest areas of opportunity. Outline your strengths and weaknesses and keep these in mind as you work. When you begin to feel challenged, ask yourself, “am I able to find the solution to this problem without asking someone else?” If you can, do your best to solve the problem on your own. However, set a time limit to find it. You don’t want to spend days searching for a solution to no result when you can simply reach out to someone and find the solution immediately.
After you’ve given your best and most honest effort to identify the solution and hit your time limit (e.g., 2 hours), you know it’s time to reach out for help. Once you’ve gotten the solution, you can go back and find out what you could have done differently on your own and keep it in mind for the future. This will help you practice problem-solving on your own while at the same time ensure that you don’t spend too much time struggling.
So, if you struggle to ask for help, set a time limit to work on your own and once that has expired, reach out for help as soon as you can. You’ll notice a huge shift in your learning and growth, as well as in how you manage your stress overall.
Relationship Building
As international students in a new country, relationship building is vital to your success. When you form a community within a new environment, many things can easily fall into place.
If you look at what we just spoke about, asking for help, that’s a perfect example. It’ll be much easier to reach out for support when you have a community that you feel safe with.
But some people really struggle to build relationships. For some, this skill comes naturally. For others, it’s something they really need to work on over time. Similarly, some people may try to develop as many relationships as possible, while others may feel more comfortable creating a small community of deep relationships without spreading their energy too thin.
The first step in developing this skill is identifying what’s most important to you.
Once you’ve found out what you’re looking for, the next step is finding out where you can go to find these individuals. For international students specifically, you may have to deal with a language and/or cultural barrier which can make things more challenging. However, many universities and colleges have international student groups that would be a great place for you to start meeting new people with a similar background and cultural practices.
Speak with your international student advisor to find out what types of clubs/groups are available, as well as what other resources international students commonly use to build communities on campus.
Taking the initial step is always the hardest, but little by little, it gets easier to meet new people as your community grows.
Public Speaking
Public speaking is one of the most common areas students struggle with throughout the entirety of their education, and sometimes even their life.
I’ve written an in-depth post about public speaking in the past, so I won’t go too in-depth on the specific steps you can take to become more comfortable, but instead I’d like to focus on the benefits of improving this skill.
When most people hear the words “public speaking”, they tense up. Public speaking is not an easy skill to master, nor is it one most people feel comfortable practicing. That’s exactly why it’s so important that you are one of the few that walks towards the challenge.
Throughout your life you will need to speak in public. Without even considering school, you’ll still have to deal with speeches at events (like weddings), workplace meetings, and general social gatherings to name a few.
Avoiding public speaking is not the way to go, because eventually it can affect your confidence and self-esteem and make you doubt yourself.
Get ahead of the game and prepare yourself so that you can stand out from the crowd and reap the rewards of potentially becoming a confident and engaging public speaker.
By doing so you might find that it becomes easier to start conversations with strangers you encounter, or that it becomes easier to build more connections. More doors will open that may have otherwise remained closed, leading to better opportunities and life changing events.
If you’d like to know what my specific tips are for improving your public speaking, I recommend you read my previous blog above. Take the chance to grow as an individual.
Implementation of This Advice
Now that you know what the keys skills are to succeeding in the U.S., it’s on you to take the next steps.
Learning something new is great, but implementing that knowledge is the real challenge and the only way you’ll actually see considerable growth.
So, I’d like to extend a challenge to anyone who’s read both parts of this blog series.
This challenge comes in 3 parts:
Identify 2 of the 6 skills we’ve talked about that you feel you need to develop.
Create a plan to develop these skills based on the advice I’ve given in these 2 articles.
Set a timeframe (eg., 3 months) to return to your plan and identify whether or not you’ve seen signs of success and adjust accordingly based on what you’ve learned.
I can almost guarantee that if you put in the time and effort, you’ll return to these blogs in 3 months time and notice a shift in your mind set and growth.
Growth starts within you. You can use others for direction, or advice, but the only way you’ll actually see this shift is by holding yourself accountable.
I hope you see success by implementing the advice I’ve provided and if you’re still struggling to come up with a plan or you’re finding it difficult to implement the plan on your own, it may be helpful to reach out to a professional for help.
I offer free consultation calls to identify whether or not we’d be a good fit. Sometimes all it takes is an expert’s insight into your situation to drastically shift your course and for you to start making progress.
I hope to hear from you soon!
About The Author
Many years ago I came to the U.S. from Taiwan and studied in a field that rarely accepted “fresh off the boat” international students from non-English speaking countries. I’m Dr. Vivi Hua, Psy.D. and I help international students navigate the cross-cultural aspects of their experience in the U.S., so they can succeed academically and socially and build a life and career that they desire!