You might remember Keith Mushonga from his vivid story about traveling to the U.S. for the first time. Well, he wanted to share a story of another travel adventure – his spring break trip to Washington, D.C. Keith says the trip was organized for international students by his school’s international center, and excitement and anticipation were running high when the students gathered to depart on their vacation. For Keith the excitement was even greater – he was sure this was his opportunity to meet the president. Here’s his story:

As we waited outside the international center for our taxis to arrive, up came Alex, dragging a large casket. “Good morning, guys?” he said, guiltily. He always had the air of a spy about him, and the dead body-sized case didn’t help. I rushed to open the large casket, grabbing the bag with my claws. I clipped it open and saw bags of Lays, Doritos and Oreos. “That’s my food for the next five days!” he said, smiling. “Oh! So where did you put the dead body…?” I joked.

Would this be me? (Photo: White House)

I had brought only a small satchel, in which I’d stuffed three pairs of clothes and my tiny laptop. I planned on wearing the same socks until they smelled as bad as my excitement!

This would my first time leaving Rock Hill since I got to Winthrop in August. I was especially looking forward to the rendezvous I planned to have with President Obama. I had tons of stories to tell him about Africa. And I had stayed up all night, yawning and drooling on my desk, writing a sonnet for the occasion called “Yes We Can!”

We ended up in two taxis, crammed up in our seats, staring out as the sleepy town of Rock Hill slipped away in the rearview. Walgreens, Earth Fare, Bi-Low, B.P.

We took the taxis to Charlotte, where we boarded an Amtrak train to D.C. In my country I’d never travelled by train, in fact our trains were virtually dead. Most people travelled in kombis, or mini-buses; overstuffed with people, livestock, bicycles, and gossip. Public transport was a drag; full of endless stops by pot-bellied police officers soliciting for bribes; full of complaints about hardships.

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Ilham was part of the Community College Initiative this past year, studying social media at Madison Area Technical College. As part of the program, each student at the school was matched with a mentor family in the community to “help us not only introduce American culture directly but also help ease our transition and have the best experience during our stay.”

I think it’s fair to say Ilham’s mentor relationship worked out pretty well. Here’s what he had to say about how his mentor relationship improved his year in the States:

Believe it or not, leaving Madison in two weeks is more heartbreaking than the time I left Indonesia on August 2012.

I will always come back to my home country Indonesia to see my mom and family. But I don’t know when in the future I’ll be coming back to Madison to visit my mentor family. My graduation day is coming up. My return travel itinerary has been prepared. Two suitcases of mine soon need packing. But no, I’m not ready to leave.

My mentor mom is Virginia Bryan. She is a librarian at the downtown campus of my college. Her husband is a retired university professor in Math and Computer Science. They have two grown children – Alexander and Elizabeth. They welcome and treat me like their son in their family and I love them so much.

Here are the reasons why I love her:

1. She is enthusiastic
School started. I was excited. She was too. I always found her messages on Facebook asking how my school days were going. I was like a kid in kindergarten whose mom was curious and excited what’s going on. She’s curious about my school and all activities I do and makes sure everything is fine.

2. She is inspiring
I admire says treats people with a good attitude. She looks happy every day and has a positive outlook on everything. Whenever I told people that I am her mentee, all of them said that I am very lucky. She’s my role model. She is a problem-solver and motivator. I think, besides a librarian, she’s really capable of being a psychologist.

3. She is a very good listener
During my transition, I complained a lot about everything: school, the weather, my instructors, people’s behavior, and other things. I can’t thank her enough for how she always found a way to make me feel better when I stressed out with all the strangeness of living abroad.

4. She is caring
I told her that a stranger followed me when I was walking home late at night; she worried about my safety then she lent me a bike. The other day, I got sick and she’s the one I could contact early morning to take me to the clinic. She also bought me an electric blanket to make me warm sleeping in the death of winter.

5. She is understanding
From the beginning, I told her that I am not used to eating American food served with cheese, mayonnaise, or any strange spices that I have never tried before. I really appreciate her understanding that I am not an adventurous person about western dishes. So she knew where to take me for supper and how to have something edible for me if she took me to her house. And she’s a good cook too. I am happy when she cooks Jambalaya and makes Pastel de Tres Leches for me.

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This is an interesting week in the webinar world, featuring several events targeted specifically to students in Asia. Of course, there’s also the regular fare of events for prospective undergraduates, MBAs, and law students.

As always, if you attend any of the below events, report back and let us know what you learned! (Use the comments, the Facebook page or just email me – jstahl@voanews.com). And please share any online events you’ve found that we haven’t.

Coming up this week:

May 20

IIP: Study in the USA Presentation, Northern Arizona University
8am US eastern time
More details:  http://www.fulbright.be/2013/may-20-2013-study-in-the-usa-presentation-of-northern-arizona-university/

May 21

MBA Watch: 10 Best Practices for Indian and East Asian MBA Applicants
10am US eastern time
More details:  http://www.beatthegmat.com/mba/event/early-success-10-best-practices-for-indian-east-asian-applicants-live-chat

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Dr. Tobie Tondi is a theology professor at the University of San Diego, and a Sister of the Holy Child, who has taught international students, and has been an international student herself. Our special correspondent Zuleyma Ramirez interviewed Dr. Tondi to find out what international students should know if they want to succeed in a U.S. classroom.

Writing skills, Dr. Tondi said, are still the most important skill she expects any student to have. International students should expect to be held to the same standards as domestic students when it comes to assignments, she added, but while they can’t expect leniency from their professors, what they can expect is support and assistance if they’re willing to seek it out and try their hardest.

So what else do professors expect out of their international students, and how understanding are they of the unique challenges of studying in a foreign language? Here are Zuleyma’s five questions with Dr. Tondi:

1 What are the most important academic skills for a student, particularly an international student, to have?

I’m still a great devotee of the usual kinds of skills that every student needs. Unfortunately I think in many American institutions I think writing has been set aside, but I’m still firmly committed to writing skills.

One of the things that’s important for international students to know, and I know this from teaching international students and also being an international student, is that writing is also a skill that’s much more difficult than listening and comprehending and responding. When I’ve had international students I always take into account that their writing skills might be not as great as somebody who has studied in the United States the whole time, because they’re working usually in a second language. And yet I do understand that writing is a skill that is something that we all need to do, and if you’re able to read and write in another language, that makes you somebody that’s great for the job marketplace.

International students shouldn’t be afraid to try to do the writing assignments as best they can and to ask for help when they need it.

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Each year around this time, famous comedians, well-known politicians, great writers, and other individuals of note make the rounds at America’s universities, giving seniors the last words of wisdom they will hear before they are officially graduated and thrust into the real world. And each year, the rest of us watch those addresses to decide which were the best, funniest, or most poignant (here’s one of our recent choices), and how they stack up against other perennial favorites (these are some of ours).

David Foster Wallace’s 2005 commencement address to Kenyon College, called “This is Water,” is often cited as one of those favorites: Here it is at the top of Time’s list of best graduation speeches … and Policymic’s, and Quora’s, and Inspyr’s. But whether or not you think it’s one of the best commencement addresses of all time, it’s now almost certainly the most-watched, thanks to a short film interpretation that’s been going viral.

The nine-minute-long YouTube video (an abridged version of the original speech) has received over four million views in just about a week.

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I graduated from high school in Russia with all As. At graduation, those of us who had achieved all As were called on the stage to receive a special award. It’s not based on class rank, percentile, or GPA range. Only absolute excellence. That’s how Russian schools define success. You either meet all the standards or you don’t. Absolute excellence.

Since I’ve been at Mount Holyoke, I realized that this is only one way to think about academic excellence. Here students are judged quite differently with, I think, mixed results.

Russians believe there are good students, who always work hard and succeed at everything, and bad students, who don’t do well at anything.  This is how students were defined in my high school and when I got to university it was quite the same.  There were students who were good at every subject – we were motivated and tried our hardest in every class. We only got As. And of course, there were those who got Cs or Bs, if they were lucky.

There is even a word in Russian used to refer to this kind of people who work hard enough to excel in every subject – otlichniki. This word has a positive connotation and literally means “people who are different from others in some good way” or “students who only get As.” Interestingly, there is also a word applied to students who don’t excel in anything – troechniki – “students who only get Cs.”

During finals, every university student in Russia carries a copy of their transcript, and the professor puts their final grade right on that transcript copy. This means that every professor can see all of a student’s grades when giving their final grade. Some students believe that once you get all As your first couple of semesters, it’s easier to get As in subsequent semesters because your professors will know you are a strong student and will be more inclined to give you yet another A. The opposite is true for troechniki.

From these experiences I came to believe that you can’t be good at one subject and not good at another. You are either motivated to succeed or not. Good at everything or not at anything. You are either otlichnik or troechnik.

Yet at Mount Holyoke, a few weeks ago, one of my professors told me, “You can’t be good at everything. You’ll go crazy.”

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This week features two online college fairs, among the more standard webinar fare. Plus, EducationUSA’s sessions are turning to the subject of American culture as international students prepare to begin their studies in just a few short months.

As always, if you attend any of the below events, report back and let us know what you learned! (Use the comments, the Facebook page or just email me – jstahl@voanews.com). And please share any online events you’ve found that we haven’t.

Coming up this week:

May 13

EducationUSA: In and Out of the Classroom
10am US eastern time
More details:  https://events-na1.adobeconnect.com/content/connect/c1/1011637095/en/events/catalog.html?folder-id=1238074207#currentSearchTag=1312381515

May 14

CollegeWeekLife/CollegeBoard: Destination: College
5pm US eastern time
More details: http://www.collegeweeklive.com/en_CA/guest/college_events 

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Certainly we’ve had many people share their good experiences interacting with Americans and meeting their fellow classmates, but not every experience is a positive one. A commenter calling himself “AGradStudent” wrote in to tell us about a less-than-stellar experience with one of his classmates in Wisconsin. What would you do in his place? Do you think what he’s experienced is normal or unusual? AGradStudent explained:

I think many American graduate students are nice, but certainly some of them are overtly unfriendly to me. For instance, some of them ignored my greetings and pretended they did not see me from like 3 foot distance (which is absurd). After it happened several times, I don’t bother to say hello to them.

And certainly there are things that they do not expect me to do (but they can do). For instance, I approached a female graduate student (there was some chemistry between us) and one male graduate student literally blocked my way. Since then there have been couple of occurrences where he tried to physically threaten me, e.g. following me really close in the hallway. I have just ignored these weird behaviors but can not help feeling very uncomfortable.

This was totally unexpected and I believe the demographic factor certainly plays a role in the way people behave toward internationals (~90% population is white in my college town). I hope it would be different in other areas of the country, e.g. NYC, CA, ….

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Welcome to a new entry in the Glossary of Confusing Words! The person who submitted this one didn’t give us any context, just the single word – tutorial. But it’s a good word, because it can have several different meanings in relation to a university education. So thanks to whoever sent it in!

Tutorial

In general, a tutorial is any sort of specialized or intense instruction. It’s related to the word “tutor,” and technically describes a session taught by a tutor. These days the “tutor” tends to be someone on the internet who has prepared learning materials on a specific subject. So you could watch a Photoshop tutorial on YouTube if you wanted to learn how to color correct photographs, for example.

At university you will encounter this meaning of “tutorial” as a set of instructions for learning a specific skill. Here are some tutorials that the University of California offers to help students learn how to use their library.

But at universities, a tutorial can also imply something much closer to its original meaning. You may have heard of the tutorial system in connection with Britain’s Oxford and Cambridge Universities, where students meet each week in groups of two or three to engage in deep discussions facilitated by a faculty “tutor.”

A small number of American universities offer tutorials based on the Oxbridge system. But it’s more common for American universities to use tutorial-style sessions as a discussion-based companion to traditional classes. At many universities students meet outside of their class sessions in smaller groups, often led by a teaching assistant. These sessions are intended to talk about the class material, to reinforce what was taught in class with additional practice, and sometimes to teach material not covered in the lecture.

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Students in America live in all types of arrangements – on campus and off campus, dorm rooms and apartments, alone and with roommates. Earlier this year Annisa discussed how she chose between all the possibilities, but which one would you choose? Here are a look at all the different types of housing our bloggers live in, and what each one is like.

Sunny – Sharing a house with friends

I am living off campus (we call it “off grounds” at UVa because we use “grounds” instead of “campus”…). We five girls rent this house. This is a funny “house picture” taken outside of my house with my housemates a while ago. Virginia has had weird weather, and spring/summer just finally arrived.

Tom – On campus, but apartment-style

I live in ‘Leonardtown’ which is like a little community of around ten separate blocks of individual self-contained apartments. We live on campus so it is university housing, which I applied for through their online application form. I applied when I was still in England, and was placed with 3 other Americans. Our apartment has two bedrooms, with two of us in each. It is my first time sharing a room, which was quite daunting at first but myself and my roommate are good friends now!

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Events are back this week with one for every stage of your education. Whether you’re applying, starting in the fall or graduating, someone out there has a webinar this week for you.

As always, if you attend any of the below events, report back and let us know what you learned! (Use the comments, the Facebook page or just email me – jstahl@voanews.com). And please share any online events you’ve found that we haven’t.

May 7

MBA Watch: Why Applications Get Rejected
12pm US eastern time
More details:  http://www.beatthegmat.com/mba/events

May 9

CollegeWeekLive: STEM/Health Sciences Day
More details:  http://www.collegeweeklive.com/en_CA/Guest/STEM_DAY

EducationUSA: In and Out of the Classroom
12pm US eastern time
More details:  https://events-na1.adobeconnect.com/content/connect/c1/1011637095/en/events/catalog.html?folder-id=1238074207#currentSearchTag=1312381515

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The chaos of traveling. The mixed emotions of leaving your family. The fear and excitement of that moment when the plane takes off and it all becomes real. We’ve shared several stories of what it’s like to arrive in the U.S. for the first time, but perhaps none as vivid as this, submitted by Keith Mushonga. Keith arrived this past fall to study English and French at Winthrop University, and the  journey to get there was a whirlwind adventure all its own. Here’s what he wrote:

When I got off the plane in Washington, D.C., I found myself in a fast-paced world. People were streaming back and forth like disco lights in the mumbo-jumbo of a New York night life. Young kids were banging their way past me, ogling at me like a nuisance. Everyone seemed to know where they were going. I felt lost with my thick-rimmed spectacles, my small backpack and my overactive imagination.

“Oh my… I’m gonna get lost! I’m gonna get lost!” I thought, as people trotted out of the Ethiopian Airlines, with cellphones clung to their ears.

“And so Jimmy dont forget to pick me up in thirty minutes…”

“Sasha.. Josh…??”

“Andrew!!! You what???”

They were calling their families and friends and telling them that they’d come back home from Africa. They’d seen lions, giraffes, warm smiles and clear azure skies. They’d been on safaris in splendid Savannah forests that stretch for eons like green carpets.

I, on the other hand, had just left home in Africa. I’d found myself in a meandering maze of unfamiliar faces, foods and sounds. I clung onto my backpack like it was my life. Then I resorted to following everyone else. I soon ended up in a long snaking immigration line, being watched by a barrage of cameras. They stared at me like a criminal. I was waiting for my passport to be stamped, and I hoped that I wasn’t going to be deported and sent straight home…

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May 1 is “National College Decision Day” in the U.S., the deadline for accepted students to make their choice and commit to a school. A fun tradition at many high schools is for students to wear the t-shirt of the college they’ve picked, announcing their decision to their friends and classmates.

YEAH DECISION DAY YEAH COLLEGE. twitter.com/Gracie_Baird/s…

— Gracie Baird (@Gracie_Baird) May 1, 2013

Are you wearing a college t-shirt today (symbolically or for real)? Let us know in the comments or share your picture with @voastudentu!

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“Just wanted to inform you that your admission package will be leaving our office tomorrow. I held your package back because I was hoping to include an additional letter. Please see the attachment.”

This was the email that I received from Ed Bustos, director of international admission at Rollins College, while I was waiting to hear back about my early decision application. To my surprise, the attachment was an invitation to participate in the school’s Alfond Scholarship competition, which awards up to 10 admitted students full tuition plus room and board. The competition takes place each year on the Rollins campus in Florida on the last weekend of February, and is based on interviews, class discussions and essay writing.

I had never been outside the borders of my country in my whole life. Even worse – I’ve barely been outside the tiny Kathmandu valley where I live, except for a few times to visit relatives during festivals. Now in a month I was going to go to Florida – all alone – with complete strangers – all alone – to compete for scholarship money that could make or break my college career – all alone.

It was one a.m. when I got the email, and I couldn’t sleep the rest of the night.

After a few days, I got another email with the schedule of the competition, travel arrangements, and some articles that I had to read prior to my arrival. I wasn’t entirely sure at this point what I was meant to do with the reading materials – I thought maybe they were preparation for the class discussions or the essay writing – so I started researching the articles and their authors and made some brief notes for myself.

The arrival

A month later, after getting my visa from the U.S. embassy, I arrived in Orlando, Florida. K.C., an Alfond student (that’s what Rollins calls someone who has won the scholarship) who is also from Nepal, and who would serve as my mentor, host and interviewer for the competition, picked me up at the airport. In the 15 minutes it took to reach the college, it felt as if I was in a movie. I had never witnessed such clean streets, or roads with no motorbikes on them.

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