Hard Times

It has been more than a year since I came to the United States. As a new immigrant, there is a great deal of challenges when living in an unfamiliar country. People may experience a variety of problems. Having a hard time to overcome any inconvenient situation has become a part of my life. Those difficulties have been continually annoying me, and they always block me from heading forward. In my case, no matter how I solve the difficulties, there are always many new challenges for me. In spite of other factors, English has been the most frustrating problem for me, and it has affected my life in various ways.

First of all, finding a job with poor English can be very difficult in the U.S. Since I came here, I have been looking for some part time jobs. On account of my English, I haven’t been able to find a lot of information about jobs. At the beginning, a lack of jobs information made me have no idea what to do. I was asking everyone I knew as if working was the only way to survive. Nevertheless, I did contact several employers later, but then I ended up in some embarrassing situations. For instance, while interviewing for a sales position, I couldn’t explain the products clearly or quiet understand what others said. These were the reasons why I failed in the interviews. Communication in English is so much more important and difficult than I could have imagined. Nevertheless, speaking and listening are both weaknesses that are really hard to improve because it takes a lot of time to practice. The purpose of a language is to be able to communicate with other people. Otherwise, there is no point of learning any language. Even though I’m having trouble getting a job, I believe that my English will eventually improve, and I will get through this hard time very soon in the future.

Another problem due to my English is that I find it hard to have an active social life. Obviously, the inevitable fact for a foreigner is that he or she has to start over to make friends in a new country. Since communication plays an important role in meeting people, my poor English has caused me a lot of inconveniences in terms of my social activities. For example, sometime it feels very difficult to express what I want to say. When I talk with strangers, I act awkwardly and probably give them a bad first impression. Therefore, the more difficulty I have for speaking English, the more stress I feel. I’m afraid to be made fun of by others because speaking broken English can be extremely embarrassing for me. Most of the time, I prefer to be a wallflower rather than being a real blabbermouth. As a result, I rarely make new friends, so I actually don’t have many opportunities to improve my social life. In fact, just studying English from the books without actively using it will not help anyone to improve their English communication skills. Especially in my situation, a lack of practice will make my speaking skills get worse because I always stay at home without participating in any social activities. The challenge of making new friends always annoys me since it’s too boring to live here without any friends.

Finally, it’s inconvenient to live in this country because of my poor English. As a college student, most of my daily life is being in school, and the essential part of studying is to be able to understand the lectures from the professors. However, when I was in my first semester of chemistry courses, I made many mistakes in my experiments because of my poor listening skills. After the professor explained all the instructions of an experiment, I still wasn’t sure what I was supposed to do, so I had a lot of trouble at that time. Furthermore, I also had the unpleasant experience of seeing a doctor. Since I had no idea about how the medical system works in this country, my journey to the hospital completely drove me crazy. From the registration window to the nursing station, and then being transferred from a general doctor to a specialist. Throughout these processes, I went to many offices and different departments to ask for help. Because I could not explain my situation very clearly, even the staff could not give me any useful information about my doctor appointment. I had not imagined how hard it could be to see a doctor without intelligible English. Certainly, my life has been filled with challenges that tend to test my English ability every second. I hope my life will be easier once my English gets better.

To be honest, I was looking forward to having my life changed by immigrating to this country. I might have imagined the wonderful life of living abroad, but I obviously underestimated the power of English. However, now I realize that integrating into a new country is the biggest challenge I have ever encountered. Regardless of all those troublesome events, I personally admit that living in this English speaking country is a valuable chance to improve my second language and to expand my perspectives. As a matter of fact, nobody can fluently speak English as a second language without hard work. These difficulties seem to be teaching me an important lesson in my life: “No pain, no gain” is always true.