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My Experience As a
Foreign Student in the United States
By Aung Chan Aye
I am an
undergrad student from Myanmar studying in the
United States. I have been here just for a year. I
have a keen interest in social science and public
affairs and my major will be Legal Studies or Policy
Analysis, which is under the Public Administration.
So, what I am going to share with you guys will be
my personal experiences and opinions about studying
(particularly about Social Science) here in
the U.S. and studying in Myanmar. I think, you
might have heard that the education system of
Myanmar and that of the U.S. are quite different.
Before I had a chance to study in the U.S., I just
had a guess of the differences between the two
systems. I don’t know much about the curriculums of
the U.S.’s high schools. But, what I think is that
the curriculums of our country is not down below the
curriculums of the U.S. even if they are not at the
same standards. But the main difference is the way
those curriculums are taught to us, the students. In
Myanmar, we learned by heart for the main purpose of
passing the exams with high marks and flying colors
and to get into the good careers such as medical or
engineer fields. I also learned most of the subjects
by “memorizing” just in order to pass the
exam but not for understanding deeply into the
subjects or things that I studied. Therefore, I
tended to forget what I had learned easily after the
exams. Unfortunately, it is not the only the
students who study just for exams but also the
teachers whose teaching focuses on preparing the
students just to succeed in the tests.
However, in the U.S., it is different. I just
took three 3 credit hours classes (9 credits in
total) in my first semester here in the U.S. I had
to buy more than ten books required by the classes I
had taken. I was amazed at how thick the books were.
They were as thick as the Myanmar novels. So, I
started wondering if I could read those thick books
and prepare for the exams. But it later turned out
that I had to read these books not to remember all
of their contents but I had to read them just to
understand the main ideas (points) of the book, and
what they are trying to say. In the classes, the
professors give the lectures of the main points in
the books by using projectors and I have to take
note of the main points which are very useful for
the exams. In some classes, the professors give the
hand-outs of the list of notes they have already
written. In the exams, mostly the main ideas are
asked in the form of multiple-choice questions in
order to check if you understand what the books are
trying to say usually. Usually, an essay question
follows. For the essay section, I have to answer the
question asked based on my understanding of the
books, articles, that I read in the class and
lectures given by the professors with my own words.
Therefore, I do not need to memorize but only need
to have critical reading skill to understand
the concepts of the subjects (general idea and the
big picture) that I am studying.
In some
classes, I have to write papers. The topics of the
papers are based on the materials like the articles,
books taught in the class and lectures given by the
professors. I can also go to the Internet to
research more about the topics I am assigned to
write from scholarly sources or I can also go the
library to find and read books related the paper
topics. But the point I would like to make here
regarding to writing papers is that it involves a
lot of critical thinking and reasoning that
our Myanmar education system fails to equip us
with. I still remember that it took me more than 10
hours to write my first paper which was three double
space pages because of my lack of critical thinking.
I think, there are books outside about critical
thinking. You guys can look for one and read it if
you want to learn about critical thinking.
You
might have already known what I am going to talk
about now. In the U.S., you can choose any majors
you want, like medical and computer science.
Admission into those schools are not based on your
marks from the high schools. For example, you can
major in computer science as long as you can cope
with the computer science courses. If you keep
failing in computer science courses, that will not
be a good major for you. You should have a good
sense of what you are good at. I mean, between what
you can do it or what you can not. By saying this, I
doesn’t at all mean that you are not allowed to
major in ,for example, Computer Science even if you
think you are not good at math. You can at least
give a try because here you do not need to declare
your major immediately. So, let’s say, you take one
and two computer science courses, and you find out
that you are not ok with them, you can put the
credits hours of these classes into your elective
courses ( which I think is from 20 to 25 credits
hours in any majors) and change your major. If you
are ok with them, surprise!, surprise!, why don’t
you go on majoring in the computer science? However,
some of the schools have admission tests of their
own. For example, if you want to get into law school
, you have to take LSAT (Law School Admission Test).
(by the way, law school in the U.S. are only for
graduate students.) If you don’t pass it, you will
not get admission. Simple! I hope you all can make
your dreams come true.
If you have any
question, feel free to email me at
thargyi85@gmail.com.
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