{"id":23969,"date":"2020-08-25T13:01:50","date_gmt":"2020-08-25T17:01:50","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/wtbu\/?p=23969"},"modified":"2020-08-27T16:26:16","modified_gmt":"2020-08-27T20:26:16","slug":"bu-students-create-international-student-survival-guide","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/wtbu\/2020\/08\/25\/bu-students-create-international-student-survival-guide\/","title":{"rendered":"BU Students Create International Student Survival Guide"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" width=\"100%\" height=\"300\" scrolling=\"no\" frameborder=\"no\" allow=\"autoplay\" src=\"https:\/\/w.soundcloud.com\/player\/?url=https%3A\/\/api.soundcloud.com\/tracks\/883153432&amp;color=%23ff5500&amp;auto_play=false&amp;hide_related=false&amp;show_comments=true&amp;show_user=true&amp;show_reposts=false&amp;show_teaser=true&amp;visual=true\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<div style=\"font-size: 10px; color: #cccccc; line-break: anywhere; word-break: normal; overflow: hidden; white-space: nowrap; text-overflow: ellipsis; font-family: Interstate,Lucida Grande,Lucida Sans Unicode,Lucida Sans,Garuda,Verdana,Tahoma,sans-serif; font-weight: 100;\"><a href=\"https:\/\/soundcloud.com\/wtbu\" title=\"wtbu\" target=\"_blank\" style=\"color: #cccccc; text-decoration: none;\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">wtbu<\/a> \u00b7 <a href=\"https:\/\/soundcloud.com\/wtbu\/bu-students-create-international-student-survival-guide\" title=\"BU Students Create International Student Survival Guide\" target=\"_blank\" style=\"color: #cccccc; text-decoration: none;\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">BU Students Create International Student Survival Guide<\/a><\/div>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">By Grace Ferguson<\/span><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">It isn\u2019t easy being an international student.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">When you step foot on campus you\u2019re facing a new culture, a new education system, and a new way of doing things. Not to mention, there are all kinds of paperwork and appointments you have to go through just to get into the country, and stay in it legally.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">That\u2019s why a group of students put together a new booklet: <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/drive.google.com\/file\/d\/1nNXedS7GBUPRA1Qst1v6OmeZr9_AcLHA\/view?fbclid=IwAR3TObRWRkwyqeFCZhl1Lb_2a3huJ6TWR9lkqrcY0l5UJ_yqp0MDt6LULQw\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The Complete International Student Campus Survival Guide<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">. Ariane Vigna, Jessica Zheng, and Daike Tsumagari wrote the guide to help orient international students and connect them to resources.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The guide offers advice on a range of topics, generally geared towards freshmen, like: what you need to open an American bank account, how American college traditions like Greek life work, and when to do mandatory check-ins with BU\u2019s International Students and Scholars Office (ISSO).<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">There are also sections with more general advice, like how to succeed academically and get involved in clubs.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Vigna, one of the co-authors, is a junior from France. She said she and her co-authors wrote the guide to answer the kinds of questions they had when they first came to BU.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u201cI think what prompted this guide was also the idea that being a freshman right now must be really, really scary\u2014much more for international students too, because there\u2019s the added xenophobia, racism, and the pandemic,\u201d Vigna said. \u201cIt\u2019s a lot of pressure, I\u2019m sure, for them. And so the idea was to provide support and let them know that they\u2019re welcome here.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Now that a pandemic has transformed college life, Vigna said the guide is even more important. When she started at BU, she relied on being immersed in the classroom to learn the norms of American education.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u201cFor me, there\u2019s a lot of times where I overheard explanations of how things worked, or I kind of picked up on cues,\u201d Vigna said. \u201cAnd I think that students doing classes from home, whether that\u2019s on campus or abroad, it\u2019s going to be kind of tough to adapt to classes the American way and the COVID way all at once.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">For Vigna, some of the most important information in the guide is in the section about getting internships and jobs. For example, it points out that different cultures have different expectations for what to say in a job interview\u2014an American job interviewer might expect a different level of modesty than what an international student is used to in their home country.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u201cI think it\u2019s important that American students don\u2019t really have an edge over international students in terms of cultural norms,\u201d Vigna said.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The guide also goes over the basics of work authorization. To get an off-campus job or internship, international students have to get permission from the ISSO, even if the opportunity is unpaid.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Zheng, a co-author from Canada, wishes she knew that as a freshman. The summer after her first year at BU, she got an unpaid internship without having a work authorization. She didn\u2019t know she needed one.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u201cAnd then I checked in again with the ISSO, and they said \u2018If you continue working, we will have to deport you,\u2019\u201d Zheng said. \u201cAnd so that was kind of jarring, I think.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">This spring, Zheng started <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/groups\/228783195086284\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">a Facebook group<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> for international students at BU. She had questions about how other international students were handling the storage of their belongings\u2014BU told students not to come back to campus during spring break, and the university only offered to ship student belongings within the U.S..<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u201cI, instead of putting it on the class Facebook group, I was like \u2018Wait, there has to be an official Facebook group for international students, exclusively,\u2019\u201d Zheng said. \u201cAnd I looked it up, there wasn\u2019t any, and so was like \u2018To hell with it, I\u2019m gonna make one.\u2019\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Now, the group has over 600 members. Zheng said she saw a spike in members after Immigration and Customs Enforcement released restrictive regulations in July. The regulations, which have now been rescinded, would have made it illegal for international students to be in the U.S. if they were taking classes entirely online.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">For now, the guide is available in the BU international students Facebook group. But the authors say they\u2019re talking to the Dean of Students office and other departments and programs like BU Student Government to expand their distribution.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Zheng also said that she and her co-authors are thinking about translating the guide into different languages.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>wtbu \u00b7 BU Students Create International Student Survival Guide By Grace Ferguson &nbsp; It isn\u2019t easy being an international student. When you step foot on campus you\u2019re facing a new culture, a new education system, and a new way of doing things. Not to mention, there are all kinds of paperwork and appointments you have [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":18157,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1597,14],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/wtbu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23969"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/wtbu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/wtbu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/wtbu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/18157"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/wtbu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=23969"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/wtbu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23969\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":23973,"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/wtbu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23969\/revisions\/23973"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/wtbu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=23969"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/wtbu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=23969"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/wtbu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=23969"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}