Nowadays, more and more young students from overseas choose to study in Canada; however, some have many problems living and studying here.

First, not having enough experience in life is one of the biggest problems for these international students. For example, many do not know how to rent an apartment, or to clean a room. I come from Shanghai China. In my country, each family can only have a child, expect for couples that have twins. As a result, my parents love me very much. I don’t have to do anything at home. The only thing that I needed to do is focus on my education. After I came here and moved out from home stay to apartment, I learned that I needed to do everything by myself! At that time, I didn’t even know how to cook.

Second, having poor time-management skills is another problem. Some students are always absent from class because of their poor time-management skills. Life in Vancouver may be very different from the life in their countries. In China, you can see people everywhere. We have various lifestyles. For example, we go to Karaoke, a pub or shopping in the nighttime. I remember the first time I came here; I felt I was very lonely when I walked on the street for 20 minutes, I couldn’t see anybody on the street. Many international students may have the same feelings as me. The only different is we choose different ways to solve loneness. Some students always use the Internet to chat with their friends. Some of them always play online games. These reasons may cause them to always to be absent from morning classes or even the whole day.

Third, not having stress is also a big problem. If you want to go to a foreign country for studying, such as in Canada, the USA or Australian, it is important to have enough money. Now, many parents choose to support their children to go abroad, therefore, these students don’t have any stress about money. Their parents cannot easily control them because of the long distance. This causes them to use money without a careful plan. Some only pay the tuition fee but never come to school.

In conclusion, I think, we are very lucky that we can study in Canada. Therefore, learning how to be independent and how to succeed are what we need to do. Studying overseas is very popular for people from some countries but we needs or careful not to learn bad habits or how to waste money!!!

April 2003