Being An International Student

Chicago, August 21st, it ‘s been cooling and the daylight seems getting shorter. That must be a sign for the end of wonderful summer, darkness is going to take over this town for the whole harsh winter upcoming. The little boy that year is now grown and learning how to deal with tough life in a country that he has never ever imagined to be by any chance. I’ll officially turn 21 in November. I’m from Vietnam, a small country somewhere in Southeast Asia. Being an international student is the dream of millions of students all around the world. Except lucky factor and wealthy family, apparently students who want to be an international student in US has to be talented or high achieving in school so that they could be accepted. I’m one of them. One

How does it work? Nobody could possibly give a particular answer for this. Intelligence is defined as the ability to acquire and apply knowledge and skills. Human intelligence, according to Robert Sternberg, is “mental quality that consists of the abilities to learn from experience, adapt to new situations, understand and handle abstract concepts, and use knowledge to manipulate one’s environment.” It’s a complex combination of learning memory, reasoning and problem solving skills. Intelligence could be classified as 9 main types: naturalistic, musical, logical-mathematical, existential, interpersonal, bodily-kinesthetic, linguistic, intra-personal, spatial intelligence. For example people with interpersonal intelligence are likely to be good at communicating and understanding others. People who are able to speak more than 3 languages should be linguistic type. Intelligence is widely measured by an IQ test which was originally designed by a French scientist in the early 1900s. He defined intelligence: "It seems to us that in intelligence there is a fundamental faculty, the alteration or the lack of which, is of the utmost importance for practical life. This faculty is judgment, otherwise called good sense, practical sense, initiative, the faculty of adapting one's self to circumstances. A person may be a moron or an imbecile if he is lacking in judgment; but with good judgment he can never be either. Indeed the rest of the

My mom is a pharmacist and my dad is a doctor assistant. As the result I should have been good at school or at least being a smart kid, because both of my mom and dad are considered as brilliant in their generation. But life is not as that easy to me. My mom told me when I was 3, I already knew how to count 1 to 10 in English, which is not my mom’s language. She said I’m smart. The sky was just falling down in front of me as soon as I went to school. I’ve never been interested in school because I wasn’t into it. I thought I was a dumb kid which is not able to do anything for my own life. If superman has superpower to save the world or Batman is a normal person which could save Gotham city with his talent and skills, I have my own superpower as well, “invisible”. I’ve never been good at any class in school. I’m just a very ordinary student with low grades. Those kids in elementary school, instead of writing down to solve a math problem, they were just staring at it and biting their nails, and giving the exact answer for what the teacher gave. I remembered saying that:” go back to your planet”. It might be unfamiliar with American but in Vietnam, kids are forced to go to study at their teacher’s house after class by their parents. Depending on how serious of education their parents take, it will determine how much time they are going to spend on “after class” sessions. Studying in school only is really not enough for those who want to earn high