12 Things You Must Know Before Going to College in the U.S.

The time to travel to the U.S. for college was approaching quickly and I was getting ready to move. The school had assigned me a roommate and put me in contact with her so we were texting about our room and what we wanted to do with it. Back then I had no idea how  big of a deal setting up your dorm room was, especially for girls. So, I didn’t think too much about it. I just knew I  needed a place to sleep. My roommate said she wanted to have a T.V. in the room and asked if I wanted to pitch in. The question itself just blew me away. I thought to myself, “aren’t we here to study? Why do we need a TV?” Not only was I surprised that she wanted a TV in the room but also my family didn’t even have a TV at home! We had gone without a TV for years now and I was so used to not having one. Keep reading to find out how this story ended.

I wanted to share this experience because to me this is such a funny but real example of the different mindsets when it comes to going to college in the U.S.A. as opposed to a country like the one I come from. I decided to write this article in the hopes of helping any international students out there that are about to start their journey of studying in the U.S.. I remember that whenever I did it, there wasn’t anything I could google, I just jumped in with no warnings. Not that you are about to do something dangerous but it is certainly a life-changing experience. Not only for the doors and experiences that it will open for you, but because it will change you as a person and you will come back home very different than when you left. Hopefully better-different. 

So here goes twelve things I wish I knew before starting school in the U.S. Pretend I am your older sister telling you this:

1. College is different here.

The first thing I wish I had known before coming to study in the U.S. is that college is really different here. I know this sounds like a no-brainer, ‘duh-you are in a completely different country, so of course college will be different!’ but hear me out. Before coming to the States I had already taken two years of college  in Panama, so I thought I had more experience than just a freshman coming right out of high school. And  my study habits did help me, it also helped that I wasn’t so young, but it was still a completely different ball game. The main difference to me was the mindset and purpose of college for an American student as opposed to an international student. Where I grew up, education was seen as the means to get out of poverty. Your parents tell you, “Estudia, para que seas alguien en la vida.” “Estudia, para que no te toque lo que me tocó a mí.” (“Study so that you are someone in life.” “Study so that you don’t have to go through what I had to.”). You don’t really go to college to have fun, if that happens in the process well that’s awesome, but it is not one of the main goals whatsoever. 

I would say that the American mentality is quite different. Of course they go to college to get an education, but what many of them are really after is what they call “the college experience.” And a great part of this college experience is having fun. If you didn’t have fun while going through college, you kind of missed the point. College is seen as this transition stage in life where you are not fully an adult. You are still young and these are the years when you can have fun before you go out into the real world and have all the responsibilities that come with adulthood. It’s  not that I think there is anything wrong with having fun (in a moderate way), but I do believe that knowing the different mindsets gives you a better perspective of what to expect. 

I will talk more about this in later points, but I wanted to start with this because I think that as an international student coming from a completely different culture it can be easy to get carried away and forget why you are here. 

2. A word for my ladies out there

If you are a girl studying in the U.S., I wanted to make this little note just for you because this is something no one told me and I think that if I had known this it would have saved me some tears and heartache. You need to know that for a lot of girls (and guys as well) in the U.S., one of the main purposes for  going to college is to graduate with a diploma held by a hand that has a ring on it. To be more clear, they are getting an education but they are also trying to find a husband. Just to give you an idea, the school I went to is called FHU (short for Freed Hardeman University) but people would joke that it was short for Find a Husband University. There are also jokes about getting an MRS degree  (when you go from Miss to Mrs.)

Now, I don’t say all this to bash girls in the U.S.. I used to think this mindset was ridiculous but over the years I have changed my mind. I think this is not a bad idea to find the person you want to spend the rest of your life with while you are still young. And as a Christian I am all for people getting married and not just living together as that is so common these days.  I just wanted to share this with you because I think one of the reasons I couldn’t connect very well with a lot of my girlfriends in college was because we had completely different goals in college and I had no idea about this until maybe a couple of years after leaving college. When I was in college I wasn’t trying to find a man to get married to, I was laser-focused on my education and leaving with a diploma. Of course, not every girl in college thinks this way, and especially in public schools this is not the case (I went to a conservative private christian school) but just know that this is in a lot of girl’s minds and it could be the reason why you can’t connect with them very well, especially if you are attending a school like the one I went to.

3. Take advantage of every opportunity.

This is one of the defining experiences of your life and  you will look back on these days either with joy or regret. I believe studying in a different country gives you the best of both worlds. You are not only getting a good education but you are also experiencing new things almost everyday. You are meeting new people from completely different backgrounds than you, you are getting to know a different culture, you are doing things you’ve never done before, and sometimes learning a new language at the same time. This is an amazing opportunity so give yourself the time and space to take it all in. This is your time to grow as an individual and become an even better version of yourself. Go to the campus events, join a university club, do that crazy musical everyone is talking about, do intramural sports. And this is one that will surprise you, go study abroad! You might say, -Wait what? Wasn’t I already studying abroad while here?- Yes, but technically you are just another student in school and you could study abroad like anyone else. One of the things I regret looking back on in my time in college was never looking into the study abroad program. I just assumed that I couldn’t do it because I was already studying in a different country. But I wish I had just asked someone about it.

It is not impossible to do some kind of program abroad because I did it. Not the full semester abroad, but I got to travel to South Korea with the college of Business at my school and then I got to go to Israel to tour the Bible lands. So, I just want to open your imagination to what is possible. I know that for most international students the first thing that comes to our minds is money. You probably think you can’t even entertain the idea because you wouldn’t be able to afford it. But let me tell you something that you might not know, people like to invest in young people because they see them as the future, so you will be surprised by how many scholarships and grants are out there for you when you are young. I was able to travel both to South Korea and Israel for a very cheap price on my end because of the benevolence of really good and really wealthy people. So, just look into it! The answer might be no, but the answer might be yes and you will be so happy you asked!

Say yes to every opportunity that opens before you because this is your time to try everything before you are old, have kids, or a job and all kinds of other adult responsibilities. 

4. Take your studies seriously but don’t forget to have fun.

Now that I said all of that about taking advantage of every opportunity I want to tell you to please take your studies seriously. Remember that this is why you came here in the first place. People are counting on you, I know that everyone else seems to just be coasting along and having fun, but you need to remember that you are not them. They might be in college because their parents wanted them to be, and their parents may also be paying for it. Or they might be in a lot of debt but they are not worried about it until after they graduate. Whatever the reason, they probably have completely different goals in life than you and you need to stay focused. 

But I will add to this to not forget to have fun. I was the honor student all throughout elementary school, high school, and then college. Studies and grades were so important to me and I placed a lot of my value in them. So, I took studying in the U.S. very seriously. I didn’t want to disappoint my parents and the person that was paying for my studies. So, I would spend my entire day in the classroom and then in the library, and I would come back to my room just to sleep.  This was ok to an extent, but at some point I forgot to have fun and enjoy this crazy adventure I was on. There are a couple years of college that I honestly don’t remember because I was so stressed and focused on my studies that I forgot to make any memories. I’m not saying you should go all out and start partying, drinking and doing drugs. Please don’t! What I mean is to build friendships and create meaningful fun memories with those friends that you can look back on positively. 

5. Don’t be too proud to ask for help.

Learning a culture and language different from yours is tough, don’t be so hard on yourself, and be humble enough to ask for help. Almost every school has some kind of tutoring program. Either for English or any of the other hard classes, take advantage of them. I always thought of myself as being good in English, I was usually the best in my class in schools in Panama. But English classes in another country are very different from English in an English-speaking country. They are teaching you all the grammar and technical stuff, like how to write a good essay or a research paper properly. They are not teaching you the English language itself.

I will make an educated guess and assume that you are a good student if you are studying in the U.S.. You might even be the valedictorian student for your high school and maybe your school was one of those schools that just by saying the name people are impressed. But this is why I want to tell you that you are not dumb, even if college seems harder for you than it seems for the rest of the students. Think about it, you are not only taking college-level classes in a different language (that you might still be learning), but you are also learning and adjusting to an education system very different from the one you come from. Those students have been doing this for all of their lives. They’ve been writing essays since they were in 6th grade or even younger. They at least have an idea of how teachers are and what they expect from you, some of them have even taken college classes before. On top of all that, they don’t need to adjust to a whole new culture and they might already know a bunch of people in school. I’m saying all this just to give you some perspective. Don’t beat yourself up if you are used to being the best in your class and then you come here and you are barely passing. 

6. Call your family but don’t replace that with making new friends.

Do call your family, and especially your mom. You will get so busy and overwhelmed by the amount of things you have to do in college, but don’t forget to call your family. You will make a lot of new friends and love them and that is awesome, I want that for you. But your family are the ones that really know you and will be there for you even if those friends fade away over time. On the other hand, don’t just stay in your room and only call your family all the time instead of going out to meet new people and to make new friends. There are really great people out there but you will never meet them if you stay in your room all day.

7. Make good friends.

You will become like the five people you spend the most time with, so choose wisely. Make sure you surround yourself with good company. When we are young, having a friend group and fitting in feels so important, but even more important is who you surround yourself with. Are the people around you pushing you to become someone that you are not? Calling you to do things that you know are against your principles? Do they just want to party and do drugs but never call you to go to church together or study together? Weigh your friendships and don’t be afraid to cut out people that are  not lifting you up and helping you get closer to your goals. In the same way, become the person that you want to attract. 

8. Learn how to drive.

You will find out very quickly that driving is non-negotiable in the States. If you want to get anywhere, you need to drive or get a ride. I know what you are thinking, “but Naomi, I don’t have a car, why do I need to drive?” First of all,  knowing how to drive is a skill that is worth having, even if you don’t have a car yet. Second, you never know where life will take you, who knows if you can perhaps save up enough money to buy a car (used cars can be surprisingly cheap in the U.S. and you can find a good one if you can find an honest seller that you know) or if someone feels so benevolent towards you and wants to give you their car. Maybe you end up working in the States after you graduate and then this will be more of a need than a want. Furthermore, I think while you are in the States you should take advantage of how easy it is to learn and to drive on the roads as opposed to other countries. For the most part, people follow the rules and as long as you also follow them and are careful you should be fine. I learned to drive in the States and now I hate driving in Panama because no one follows the rules, so when I go back and drive in the States it feels like a stroll around the park. 

9. Have your priorities in order.

You don’t have to go to every event, sometimes you need to say no. I know I just said all of that about getting involved and taking advantage of opportunities that come your way, but also realize when you need to step back and say no. Everything in life needs balance. Sometimes you will need to decline hanging out or going on that random weekend trip because you have a final on Monday that will determine whether you pass or not and the wisest decision right now is to stay and grind to an A this test. You also need to know yourself and how you work better.

I’ll give you an example, the library in my school had three levels. You could technically study in any of those levels if you found a table. But the first level was mostly for people that wanted to hang out. You didn’t necessarily have to be quiet on that level. The second level was for more concentrated study. You did have to keep the noise down and it wasn’t just an area to hang out with your friends. There were also study rooms that were for dedicated work. Then the third level was more for serious study with tutoring classes and what not. I learned this pretty quickly and you would mostly find me on the second level. I would be in the first level only if what I was working on didn’t require too much of my concentration or if I wanted to hang out with friends and give more attention to my social life.

I also learned that I worked better on my own and free of the distractions of friends, so if I had a big project, hard study or homework to work on I would just do it by myself. In my second studies when I knew my study habits better, I would go home and work in my room for a few hours, really doing the heavy and concentrated work and then I would hang out with friends in the evening while doing the easier projects. 

I write  all this to say, learn how you study better and what is most effective for you. You might get much more work done by locking yourself in your room for a couple of hours instead of “studying” and hanging out with friends for five hours. 

10. Get a part-time job if you need, but don’t forget that you came here to study, not to work.

When you are in college you will find that you need money, and the good thing about studying in the U.S. is that you can work on campus. This is great but it can also become dangerous. Always remember that your main goal in coming to the U.S. is to get an education, a side job is a good way to earn some extra money but it should never become your main job. I will guess that the majority of my readers are studying here on a scholarship, so think about it like this, you are being paid to study, that is your main job. When I was in college I had two part-time jobs. I wanted to pay for those study abroad programs on my own (it wasn’t much but for a broke college student, buying a coffee can make a dent in your bank account, just saying…).

So, I first took a job in our dining hall. I served food and wiped tables. This was not the most glamorous job but it paid for the things I wanted to get. Then I got a job as an RA (short for Resident Assistant). This is the person that checks that everyone is in bed by curfew and helps the students in the dorm with anything they need. At one point I think I had both of these jobs and also I was part of the cross-country team. All of this on top of taking 18-21 credit hours per semester. To say that I had too much on my plate was an understatement. I think I realized I had to stop this whenever I went to an 8:00 am class and I was struggling to stay awake. The teacher asked if me and my classmate were ready for the presentation we had. I had totally forgotten about this assignment. I was so embarrassed, I was usually the one to carry the team in group assignments but this time I was the weak link free loader. Thank God the teacher and my classmate were so graceful and said we could do it later. They must have seen how spent I was. 

I’m not saying don’t work at all, I actually think having a part-time job while in school can be a good thing because it teaches you responsibility and how to manage your time, it also gives you some experience for when you go out to try and find a full time job. Plus the money is nice of course! But my advice is that you find a very low-demanding job and even better if you can find a job within your field of study. For instance, my RA job was great because I didn’t really have to go anywhere else, it was already in my dorm and it was just a few hours a week. I wasn’t going to pay for a car with that money but it paid for my little treats and it gave me good transferable skills like dealing with people, communication skills, and how to manage conflict. 

On the other hand, my job at the dining hall was hard because it was a very tiring job. And I would come to my room so spent and with no energy to do anything. So, when I realized I needed to take something off my plate, that was the first thing that I cut. 

My recommendation is that you find what I am going to call “silly jobs.” By silly jobs I mean jobs that you wouldn’t think are jobs but they are in colleges. One job a friend had was just sitting at the gym “checking in and out students.” In all honesty, these people didn’t do anything, but this was a job that they got paid for. They just sat there and did homework for a few hours. Promise I’m not making this up. 

Another recommendation is finding summer jobs. Before recommending this though, I will say, please don’t skip visiting your family during the summers. Do it if you must, but make an effort to go visit them. You need it and they also need it. But, summer jobs are great! I had a summer job one of the summers during college and I loved it! I was a Summer Camp Representative for my school. I was assigned a partner and we would travel around to different summer camps in different States setting up booths and telling the kids about FHU. I really loved this job, I was able to travel around for free and get paid some. The best of both worlds! Granted this is not for everyone and there are not a lot of them available but it’s worth trying. 

11. Homesickness is real, don’t ignore it.

This is a very important one so please don’t zone out now. Homesickness is real and it can get out of control to the point that you want to drop everything and go home. There is a 99% chance that you will get homesick to some degree. I did, and most people I know that have lived abroad did as well. It is normal, you are not weak or crazy for missing home and wanting to give up and go back. But I will tell you to not give in because it will get better. The first months, maybe even the first year you are here, everything will seem so exciting and new and you will love it. But then as things settle in and become more monotonous and winter comes, you start to miss home and the familiarity of things. Suddenly learning new words everyday is not so fun and exciting but annoying, food is not so new and different but unappetizing and you could really go for  good homemade food cooked by your mom. Seeing your family and friends moving on and having fun without you hurts a little, and even if you have made friends it’s really hard to get as close and deep with those relationships. 

When homesickness hits, the worst thing you can do is just lock yourself inside and withdraw from people. Lean on the friends you have made, call your family, tell them you are sad and miss them but that you are determined to stay. To this day I remember the call I made to my mom when I was at the depth of my homesickness. I think our culture is not very good at expressing our feelings so my mom could tell that I was sad, I think I was crying, but I would not admit how depressed I felt. She said something so unexpected yet so helpful for me at that moment, she said, “do you want to come back?” I had thought about it, but I felt so guilty and felt like I was disappointing everyone by even wanting to give up such a great blessing. But hearing my mom say this without any judgement and as if she was saying, “it’s ok if you want to come back, you won’t disappoint us” was just what I needed at that moment. I said no, I was very sad and missed home so much but I knew I would regret it the rest of my life if I gave up, so I got up and fought. 

So, today I want to tell you that when that time comes, or if you are feeling homesick and depressed right now, don’t give up and remember why you are here. If God allowed you to come here it is because He knew you had it in you. Find help if you need, and also find an outlet for your emotions. This is something that really helped me through those times. I started running just to get out of my mind and this was tremendously helpful for me. This is what led me to join the cross-country team and it ended up being a huge blessing for me. So, find something that will get you out of your head, it can be a sport, going to the gym, drawing, singing, swimming, playing an instrument, cooking. Just something where you can let out your energy. 

12. Remember why you are here.

I said this several times throughout this article, but I believe it is so important and that’s why I want to end with it. Remember why you came here in the first place. One of the reasons I never let myself give up was because I knew what was waiting for me at home, and I’m not referring to my family. As much as I missed them, I knew that even though it had become so hard, I was living my dream and these hard times were only temporary. I knew that I wanted a better life for me than the one I was living in Panama, I knew that for people like me opportunities like these don’t just come up all the time, you have to take them when they come. I could not let my present self give up, I had to fight for the younger me that wanted this so much and for the older me that would be so thankful I stuck it out. So, I want to ask you, what is your why? Remember that today, write it down if you need to, put it on your mirror and remind yourself often, so that the distractions that come up don’t push you off course. 

As I promised, how the TV story ended…I didn’t end up pitching in for the TV. My roommate did bring one but I made sure I never watched it haha😆   

I hope that these twelve things I wished I had known before coming to study in the U.S. help you as you begin this adventure. I wish you the best, you are going to do great! If you have any questions about life in the U.S. or just want to reach out you can contact me here!

Bonus: Do the internship, and network as much as you can.

College is great but just being honest, having a degree these days is not as important as having experience and knowing people when it comes to finding a job. As terrible as this sounds, the classes you take in college, as hard as they were, will probably not help you get a job. At least this was my experience. So, my advice is that you get as much real world experience as you can. If your college has an internship program, take it. Do a great job and make connections that can help you get a job later on if that is within your possibilities as an international student. 

Until next time, stay rooted and keep wandering.

Photo by Eliott Reyna on Unsplash.