Challenges of an International Student

[Music] hi guys welcome back to my youtube channel it's been so long since i did a sit-down video like this and i miss you so so so much and i want to wish you a happy merry christmas hope you're enjoying your time and then you're having a good time at home as you can see i was chilling here if you're new to this channel hi i'm louisa donna and i make content on the international city life experience of students in france if you like content like this i'd like you to subscribe to my youtube channel and if you have any topic or any subject you want me to talk about please please please leave a comment yeah so let's go straight into today's video today i'm going i'm sharing my experience my challenges since i came to france over the past four months every kind of challenge that i've gone through just want to share with you this is whatever i'm going to say solely based on what i experienced and not like a general challenge that you are going to face once you come here it's so independent on who you are and all of that and i feel like if i share like my experience my challenges would give you an idea of what to expect once you you are planning on coming to france and then how to get prepared and all of that so yeah let's go straight into today's video oh my god yeah so to move on on today's topic i've divided my challenges into three categories where um i would like to talk about so the first is my financial yeah i think about my financial challenges first and then i move on to the social challenges and then i talk about my academic challenges lasting for the financial challenges um once you move into a new place you need to say so like you need to settle down the room you are given the room i was given let me speak let me make this more personal so when i came here the room i was given this was literally empty nothing it's just a bed chair table your sink and bathroom finished and so like within the first three months i had to spend so much in settling in you need to get yourself like um bedroom essentials like my duvet most importantly because it's so cold i cannot bring a pillow from wherever from ghana and so i had to buy one here you need to like buy your bathroom essentials things to help you set or need to get utensils and all of that all these things transform into money and though like you could get these things at a cheaper price here but in the end in total they all tend to like cost so much and within the excitement of like coming to a new place and all of that you don't notice like you haven't you know young you're spending but personally i i didn't notice like i was spending so much and so at a time like i realized and i had spent like so much money so much money and it's quite understandable because you're in a new place sometimes you buy something like to eat or to try it doesn't work for you like it doesn't work and then you cannot throw it like you have to like find something that will work for you and also apart from even buying things in your room that will help you settle and you go out you need to like get your pay your rent yeah pay your rent and your security deficits and this takes so much money and then you need to like your transport all of that like so much to do and you you you spend so much like within the first three months so so so much and so the the main challenge in this thing is in this whole situation i've described is not um having this in mind and not like really being intentional about how you spend the money about being so intentional and say okay i know in the first three months i'm going to spend so much so i'm going to be like intentional about this i'm going to track what i'm spending on that no i didn't do any of that and so by the time i had realized like i've spent so so so so so much that i could have reduced oh i could have cut down me i could have cut down and one thing i noticed on how to solve this problem it's to be so so intentional about how you solve your money track what is taking like once you come though you're excited and all of that you want to go here you want to try that you want to do that please check your money check it track it i didn't like do that and that's why i faced this challenge so to summarize this problem this challenge that i faced i had a challenge on how to track my money on how to be like in total control of how i spent my money and trying to be the adult the whole adulthood thing yeah but i thankfully i noticed this quite earlier not so late in life yeah and i i i've been able to identify the challenge and i hope it helps and i hope it also helps you when you plan on coming you're able to like tackle this and so let's move to the social problems about the social problems the major issue is it's just the vast variety of people that you that i met and so initially like we are going to a new country you you kind of read about stereotypes so for me i read about the stereotypes of the french people what experts how do they think how do they do that things like basic knowledge that could be so um um relative based on who whoever you meet and all of that me so i i i i read all of that and so i was like okay that was okay but the issue is when i came though i'm in france i'm not with french people basically i i'm in a class with people from all around the world like international students and so it would i think it would have been more easier if let's say i was with a particular group of people where i know i have an idea on how they act and all of that though people could be so so different but it could have been much easier but this is where you're with people from all over the world like all over the world and um they come with so different personalities that it's a bit peculiar to where they come from and also a bit peculiar to who they are and so it becomes so so difficult to try to adapt to like this vast variety of people for me it was so so difficult like in the beginning because as i said earlier you're trying to deal with this whole financial mess trying to sort things out trying to think and then you go to class and you also have to deal with how to deal with so much people so so much like different personalities it's it was challenging to me in the beginning it was so fun like personally i think i'm so interested in like meeting new people new things so like i was overwhelmed with all of that and until the reality hits you and then like it should you begin to see who people are like they're not i don't want to use real but like getting to know people more it unfolds who they really are and then it starts getting difficult i know people also like face the same thing with dealing with me and all of them but it becomes a big a big of a challenge and trying to adapt to like this wide range of people it was the main issue was the main challenge but i i think to deal with that i i tried to be more more open-minded very open-minded because people are so so different like they could be so weird like so so yeah and sometimes you wonder what's happening like yeah but i learned to like to be so open-minded like very open minded sometimes you're open minded but you have to be very to an extent it's it's easy to see but it's so difficult so difficult to like adapt to such situations so that was like a little challenge in my social life i want to move to the last category of the challenges that i went through let's talk about my academic challenges so academically it was so stressful so so so stressful like i think so when i came economically i've understood what not i cannot believe i've understood what the word stressful means so once again we are moving to a new country like you're so excited like you're so excited that i'm let me talk for myself i was so excited like i'm coming to france i'm coming to france and that is all i was thinking of i even forgot what what i was coming here to do like why am i coming here i i wasn't like so we are going to let me compare it when i was going to undergrad i'm going to the university i have to learn how to get a first class and you am using it as a microphone get the first class all of those things like that's like i okay for me this is what went through my mind but when i was coming here it was more of okay i'm going to say new country how am i going to chill how i guess how fun that i forgot i literally forgot that i was coming to school and so when we came as i said i had a smooth transition having fun and then boom school school stats and then is that going so fast i was like oh my god that's not what i signed for so what i signed in for personally my school starts like at 8 00 a.m and it goes on to like sometimes 8 p.m in the week then we have we sit in a class of about a class for about um six hours like one class one lecture for six hours oh my god that is just so so so much and because i didn't like stack up my mind for i knew i knew that we did this thing it didn't last for long but an inside up my mind for this kind of challenge like i was here to chill and so it become it became like so stressful and apart from all this class long class hours like you have real life projects to work on like real life lab things lab reports a lot of it's so demanding that it becomes so overwhelming and it's a huge challenge one thing i noticed is to relax like i learned this from the french people the french people are so chill like they are the chillest people i've met i've seen in life this is their system so they are used to like not that they are used they know but they are always chill like they go out they have fun like they they they they relax they try to relax but that's not the african way like we want to hustle we want to hustle too we want to make sure we're getting top grade at the point in time like i just gave up on all of that i was like okay this is the reality i need to relax i need to relax take a break even when i have things to do sleep sleep and relax and then try to deal with it like step by step try to be like the french people try to be as relaxed as they are and it helps so greatly like it helped me so much in my academic so that's why i put the academic lines because at the point i didn't really care like not that i didn't care about my grades i just needed to put in my best and that's what's needed like put in your best and then stephanie we so yeah and that was more of the economic challenges when it comes to grades i think grades don't matter to me like at this point in time they don't really matter you just need to put in your best and make sure that the stress doesn't kill your school shouldn't kill you you should you should relax and have fun and so yeah i think that was a challenge in the beginning but this was the way i was able to um deal with this challenge i know like this is just the first semester there's more to experience but i just wanted to do this video to share with you so that you have an idea you don't want to be like me and come and have you have challenges always but like this could help you some way somehow yes i hope you enjoyed this video i hope you liked it and um yeah if there are certain challenges that you also faced you can leave it in the comments and subscribe to my youtube channel like this video leave a comment share to whoever you think this video is going to be very useful to and i hope you love my content and i hope you tell people about what i do and yeah thank you for watching this video up to the end and have fun have fun merry christmas and we [Music] you

Channel: Louisa Danah

Views: 822

Keywords: international students, international student life, international student in france, ghanainternationalstudentinfrance, ghana international student in france, Erasmus, France, French embassy

Id: MhTzDSUvHaI

Length: 15min 0sec (900 seconds)

Published: Sat Dec 25 2021