First of all, the normal cost of studying abroad is not cheap.
Except for those local families who really use such a large sum of RMB as toys, studying abroad often costs hundreds of thousands and millions of tuition and living expenses, which is by no means what people think of as pocket money.
Secondly, many opportunities for studying abroad are very rare. An Ivy League admission notice, a precious opportunity to travel across the ocean, and a successful application for a scholarship are not easy to get. You need preparation, exams and a lot of hard work to win.
Studying abroad itself is a continuous adventure.
When you go to the other side of the earth, you cross not only the sea level, but also the time zone. Many times, you need to cross and experience situations that many people did not expect.
International students need to adapt to a completely unfamiliar environment and loneliness, to challenge countless hesitations, to break the shy and conservative conventions of Asians, and to integrate into a completely opposite culture from language to psychology.
Studying abroad is not only the loneliness of catching papers all night, but also the intermittent overseas phone calls when the internet speed is not good.
This is a speech in front of students all over the world, and I am embarrassed about your spoken English.
The crazy interview and socializing in graduation season is just to get an internship opportunity.
Basically, everyone who devotes himself to studying abroad will get many surprises that he never thought of in his life, and there will be many amazing changes.
Introverts are no longer introverted, subjective people are no longer subjective and lazy people are no longer lazy.
International students will meet rare good friends and change their attitude towards life because of some special trips.
They will drop out of school, quit their jobs and start businesses. Seeing more of the world, they will have some life choices that their relatives and friends can't understand. But on the whole, they will become strong.
However, this is a choice and experience worthy of applause. However, because of some prejudices and many ridiculous behaviors of foreign students, they have been covered with a deep misunderstanding.
"Returnees" will be despised and isolated by enterprises and people who have no such experience in China, and will often be named by the media.
International students are often associated with rich second generation, uneducated and rich local tyrants.
A few years ago, some people even criticized those foreign students for their clothes and lifestyles, which were too ungrounded and unsociable.
People's prejudice is not unreasonable, because the tide of going abroad in recent years has really made many people treat studying abroad in a "child's play" way and regard personality substitution skills as their business cards.
For example, some international students are keen to study the so-called "contempt chain" of studying abroad.
It is said that those who study in the United States are better than those who study in Britain, and those who study in Britain are higher than those who study in France and better than those in Australia and Southeast Asia.
Moreover, in speaking English, which China people have almost no right to speak, some foreign students also like to compare with each other, thinking that British English is superior and despising other people's Indian pronunciation.
The recent funny jokes such as "bulk English" and "Chinese-English mixture" actually reflect the domestic mainstream's incomprehension and prejudice against the various behaviors of international students. And these are all caused by some international students themselves.
For most people in China, studying abroad has become a trend, but this completely different choice and opportunity is obviously different from the mainstream social environment in China that struggles for academic qualifications, grade points, housing prices, work and survival.
To some extent, the alternative way of studying abroad is a sharp bayonet of self-esteem for the mainstream people in China, which pierces people's illusion of class equality and their persistence in the significance of their own efforts.
Therefore, the existence of international students actually makes many people angry. Because everyone is not used to the mixture of Chinese and English, they don't believe in the "special treatment" of returnees in the workplace.
Especially when these ethnic groups with high hopes really return to China, people find that they are not as good as we thought, or not all of them are so good.
People's emotions are instantly ignited, and many people will soon change from doubt to disgust:
Aren't you studying abroad? What do you do here?
Your English is not as good as mine. Aren't you talking nonsense?
In fact, China has had a lot of experience in studying abroad, from Zheng He's voyage to the Westernization Movement, from Zhan Tianyou, the founding father of Sun Yat-sen's generation, to Lu Xun, who "studied medicine and couldn't save China" in modern times, and then to some elite returnees who have been listed and raised frequently in recent years.
However, due to China's low-key attitude in the world, the firewall that keeps foreign media information out of the country for a long time, and the rising economy and active diplomacy in recent years.
China people's understanding of the world is still at the level of the old times, with "capitalism", "sexual openness" and "foreign enterprises" as key words.
For foreign students who have really come into contact with western society and have some independent opinions. Our current accumulation has not yet had a complete and objective understanding of them. We have never gone abroad or stayed abroad long enough.
Due to our lack of experience, it is impossible for us to make an objective evaluation of international students.
Because experience itself is difficult to quantify, even if it can be used as an indicator, it is difficult to measure it by the standard of advantages and disadvantages. So I left it alone.
On the other hand, our only channel of understanding is either excessive attention to the luxury life of local students or the media, such as the University of Maryland, is particularly keen on reporting content that misleads the image of international students.
Due to the limitations of their own information experience and numerous subjective reports, the whole society has obvious prejudice against studying abroad.
This prejudice is based on the high expectations of the society for returnees and overseas students. However, due to the opaque information and the lack of sufficient support from the social focus, it is actually a "castle in the air" and it is easy to collapse.
For example, when an enterprise expects foreign students to be familiar with a certain job, but when foreign students are temporarily unable to play this role because they are unfamiliar with the domestic environment, people's prejudice will impulsively turn expectations into disappointment and even lead to a kind of disgust.
For example, I remember that when I first returned to China for an internship, my leader was young and he was very picky about international students. When he contacted me, he found that my understanding of some things did not meet his expectations, and he almost expressed his disappointment in amazement.
This embarrassed me. Even though I won the trust of him and other people in the department later, the words in the process made me feel bitter all the time. However, in society, people's prejudice against returnees may be far greater than the differences between me and the internship leaders.
However, for international students who are parties.
When they return to China happily, they have to face all kinds of questions and doubts from interviewers, leaders, colleagues, relatives, family members and even society. How to answer them perfectly becomes more and more difficult.
The difficulties and challenges of studying abroad, coupled with the incomprehension of the mainstream people in China, make these originally simple overseas students and families feel unnecessarily "serious".
In the eyes of these people, a society that could have been divorced from the mainstream and had the opportunity to live independently, wonderfully and strongly will be forced to make demands on themselves and their children, so as to make the experience of studying abroad as "the greatest significance" as possible.
Suddenly, a colorful experience turned into another cold assessment.
So when you go abroad to find out how the foreign students in China are doing. You will find that, alas, they have hardly changed. Most people will return to the state of college entrance examination. In those beautiful campuses where cherry blossoms are flying and people are drinking beer, they will walk back to their lonely dormitory alone with books, without making friends or socializing, just doing problems.
They arrive at the classroom the earliest and leave at the latest, but no one can talk to them, because their spoken English can't express their psychological embarrassment of being interested in western culture but unable to break away from the mainstream social and cultural standards in China.
What they can do is to get high marks in the mid-term and final exams as much as possible, and brush the GPA infinitely to near full marks. Then I racked my brains for the job opportunities of a domestic brokerage, a big company and BAT.
Because this will ensure their living standards abroad after returning home, so that their class seats can be guaranteed in the forefront, so as to face more competition in the future.
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For ordinary China students, studying abroad is like a brave voyage.
Their study abroad is not as relaxed and casual as that of children in Europe and America, because their economic and international experience is much richer than that of China. Families in Europe and America can easily go to many countries in the world, such as Southeast Asia, Europe and Asia. As long as they want to go, they can get such opportunities by working or communicating.
We overseas students are more like those historical celebrities who went abroad in modern times, such as Sun Yat-sen and Lu Xun.
They are more or less burdened with the spirit of the country and the nation. They use their math and GPA test scores and the talents endowed by 5,000 years of culture to compete with those foreigners who are five big and three thick, sunny and humorous, and win those rare self-confidence for their motherland again and again.
For families who send their children abroad, the decision to study abroad itself is more like the whole family landing on the moon. This is an investment in the future.
For a family, a child's bright future, on the one hand, will benefit him, on the other hand, it will bring new possibilities for family face, potential economy and all aspects of development.
Moreover, in contrast, the education in most schools in China is worrying and the social environment is extremely unstable. For the growth of children, it may be more beneficial to go to a purer environment.
However, these international students and their families are still too optimistic about the influence of studying abroad itself and the changes and unchanging domestic social environment.
Studying abroad itself has a profound impact on people's change, but at present, China can't fully tap the true value of returnees by competing for skills and non-quality culture.
However, people know very little about international students, because they rarely really mention them.
On the one hand, it is also related to the way those commercial organizations and practitioners in the study abroad industry look at this matter. Because they think it is easier to get business opportunities by advocating the benefits of studying abroad than by recording the truth about studying abroad.
On the other hand, we China people are ashamed to express our situation and tend to be introverted and conservative.
Few international students often talk about the hardships of studying abroad on the Internet, because they also know that their families have the conditions to get such opportunities, and they don't want others to think that their hardships are pretending to be forced, which is a performance of "selling well after getting cheap".
However, neither people's prejudice nor all kinds of inaccurate reports can hide the rapid rise of comprehensive strength of those who have real talents or rich experience abroad.
Indeed, we must admit that studying abroad is not the mainstream, and it is a bit risky, with many challenges and misunderstandings.
For international students, some people will deny their academic qualifications, some will criticize their English, some will deliberately isolate them, and some will do their best to be sarcastic.
But it is gratifying that among the overseas students I have contacted, everyone knows that when they carry their bags and come to a country where they will no longer feel familiar or close casually, the decision to study abroad must become meaningful through their own practical actions.
As wave after wave of adventurers, studying abroad has never been a "class show" in people's eyes, nor is it the so-called "foreign moon is better than China Garden".
Because when you breathe strange air in a strange country every day and think about how to break through those challenges, you are not stupid enough to spend your parents' hard money and precious time on these stupid things.
In your daily life, you are always thinking about how to do better in the exam, what materials to read, when to go to work, when to play ball with friends, when to recite words, and who to look for and what to do.
Being overseas, the only idea of international students is to make themselves NB. Since studying abroad is meaningful, try to make it meaningful.
For the fate of returnees, Chen Danqing once said:
The fate of returnees confirms the historical changes of China in the past century. China's modernization process is a repeated contest between historical trends and political forces. Most of them are the victory of the local faction and the frustration, adjustment and cooperation of the returnees. Modernization has three levels: tools, systems and culture. The so-called modernization, "culture" is undoubtedly the most essential and deepest link. Many aspects of today's national policies are learned from the West, but the relationship among implements, systems and cultures is always unbalanced.
In short, what he wants to express is that our understanding of the West is only superficial system, management of foreign companies, modern technology and so on.
As for the content wrapped by culture, such as independent expression, independent existence, complete personality and active social interaction. From beginning to end, we are like an exotic dish, which makes us uncomfortable to smell.
Because of the so-called inferiority complex, too much quick success and too much development pressure, we all disdain to understand the outside world. Guard the golden lion in front of the Forbidden City and constantly wipe it.
So, lovely international students, you still have to work hard.
You should put as many experiences as possible on your resume, stay abroad for as many years as possible before returning to China, earn as much money as possible and exercise as much as possible. You can't make mistakes.
As far as possible, you should not only speak fluent English, but also be beautiful and elegant. Meet secular needs.
You'd better force yourself to be higher than the center of Shanghai. You can be grounded in the dust and everyone loves you.
Indeed, your study abroad was meaningful at that time, is meaningful now, and will be more meaningful in the future.
But now, you must make your study abroad full of various meanings, economy, ability and values.
You should change from a work of art returned from studying abroad to a standardized commodity adapted to the development pace of China.
Because at present, not many people can accept your personality except your ability to work.
Your openness to sex, objectivity to politics, insight into economy and sharp comments on social phenomena, although each is the driving force for China's future development.
But when most people are trying to make money for the house with their eyes half closed, your "talent" and your "meaning" don't look so interesting.
Because in their eyes, these things may not be weapons or tools, but thorns.
Will hurt people's ambiguous attitude, will hurt people to learn to be conservative for protection.
As you are still struggling for your salary, I need to give you some advice.
What you need to do most is to learn, observe, understand and adapt.
Just like when I was studying abroad.
Be patient, this habit will accompany you all your life.
But one day, you will be in the right place, at the right time, in the right way,
Give full play to all the abilities you have gained in this rare experience of studying abroad.
It cannot be stopped, and no one can stop it.
Because this is the inevitable significance of your study abroad.