Say No to Fear
One of the most common emotion that we encounter everyday is fear. As an international student, I have to live in another country that speaks different language and have different culture. It is always hard to survive from the culture shock, especially is to make new friends, using a language that you’re not used to everyday and got to work with homesick. I am very lucky because I went to an international high school, so I am already getting used to have classes in English. However make friends with Americans is still a big problem for me.
UCSB has a lot of Chinese students. When you first come here, it is a very good thing, because stick together with people from your mother country can ease the fear and nervous. However, it gradually becomes a bad thing. If you do not have the courage to talk with your American roommates and be friends with them, you are hardly like later. It is too comfortable to stay with Chinese, we do not need to afraid that we are acting weird or do not have any common topic to talk about. The fear of communicate in English cause the problem for me. If I can not explain my idea clearly, it seems that I am not so “smart.” It would also be very awkward if people do not really have much common topics to talk about.
The fear of walking out of comfort zone is a big problem for me. However I realize later that it is not really a big problem. As in my Geo 3a section, I have to find a partner and my partner is an American. I have to talk to him for my homework. But actually when we start to communicate, things are going well, it is not like what I thought it would be. Thought the conversation is still a little bit awkward, but at least he is a very nice person and easy to talk with. All the fear is from my imagination. People are afraid of unknown, the only thing we can do to defeat the fear is to walk out of the known area and to explore the outside. Meanwhile you will find that it is not like what you imagined at all, it might be worse but most of the time you never know if you never try. Push yourself more, and you will see the difference.
