Stress: The Harsh Reality of International Students
Nabil Rahman was born in the capital of Bangladesh, Dhaka, one of the most densely populated cities in the world. Growing up, Nabil seemed to have endless curiosity when it came to computers. More often than not, he would get on his father’s computer and play around with applications like Adobe Photoshop, Adobe Illustrator, CorelDRAW, and such. Dealing with design software since he was merely five years old, he developed a passion for graphic design and a keen eye for aesthetics. Such early access to computers helped him achieve competency in computer skills and motivated him to pursue his career in Computer Science. In 2016, he ended up moving to Boise to do his Bachelor’s in Computer Science at Boise State University.
Throughout his time at Boise State, he worked as a learning assistant for several math and computer science courses and thus helped many students. He worked as a graphic designer at the Boise State Student Media because of his expertise in visual design. Currently, he works as an end-to-end product developer who designs and develops enterprise SaaS products capitalizing on the aesthetic usability effect. By working in the graphic design industry for more than ten years, he developed a solid understanding of user experience (UX) and user interface (UI) design along the way. He is now in his final semester and will be joining MetaGeek as a Human-computer Interaction Engineer after graduation.
Stress: The Harsh Reality of International Students
December 10, 2019
Boise State University
1910 University Drive,
Boise, Idaho 83725
Dear Sir/Madam:
My letter aims to bring your attention to a generally overlooked matter of safety on campus. With your visionary leadership, I believe that this is a subject that will not bypass your desk without the due attention it deserves. While Boise State University has a good reputation as an institution of tertiary education, there is still room for improvement when it comes to dealing with the interests of international students. The world-class educational facilities at Boise State are not complemented by a world-class response to the mental troubles of foreign students. Instead, the response is largely unethical. Hoping that you and your team will take this matter seriously, I’d like to share an issue of safety I encountered not too long ago. But, before I share that with you, I’d like to talk briefly about my background, which I believe will help in understanding how I developed an interest in this particular safety issue and why I care about it. I think linking my personal experience to this letter will help in seeing the issues from the perspective of an international student like myself.
I grew up in the capital of Bangladesh, Dhaka, a city of approx. 20 million people that has an area only 1.4 times larger (118.3 mi²) than Boise! If you ever walk down the street of Dhaka, you’ll notice the city’s polluted air combined with an unending stream of people, unexpected closure of streets, speeding cars, menacing buses, and their deafening honking! I think it’s reasonable to believe that people are less empathetic in crowded cities and empathy is less anticipated from someone who grew up in one of the most populated and polluted cities in the world. Fortunately, I was born in a family where arts and literature were always appreciated. My father is a renowned artist and curator from Bangladesh, and my mother is a novelist, researcher, and an educator. So, I think the environment I had at home was very different from what most of my friends had. When I was a kid, I used to watch my father work on his woodcut paintings as he talked about the meaning of arts and how arts can invoke emotion and peacefulness in people’s mind. He often used to tell me that that it’s the artist’s job to imagine how the audiences would feel watching the artist’s work and improvise based on the imagination. I think this idea planted the seed of empathy in my mind from early on. In addition to having empathy as one of my core values, I often received comments from my clients and professors stating that I am a logical thinker. I hope my strengths and core values will become more evident as we dive deeper into the conversation.
Growing up, I had to go through numerous challenges in my quest for finding a better education. I switched a couple of schools hoping that I’d have a better learning experience. While I can’t say that the plan had completely worked out, I made a lot of friends from diverse backgrounds along the way and learned how people’s perspective could vary significantly even from school to school. I think being able to go through different environments, meeting people with diverse experiences, seeing the variations in thinking has helped me become empathetic towards others. My definition of being empathetic is to able to put yourself in someone else’s shoes and imagine how they would feel in a particular situation. Being empathetic has encouraged me to become nonjudgmental and be very open-minded towards new and conflicting ideas. I sincerely believe that if we don’t try to see a situation from varying perspectives, if we stop showing empathy towards the opposing party, our conversations will turn into a heated argument and prevent us from addressing the actual problems that are apparent in our society. Because of my empathetic mindset, I always care about the people around me and find joy in helping others. As an international student myself, I thrive to help students who are just like me. My interest to aid others influenced me to work as a learning assistant and tutor at Boise State for a few years in complex engineering and math classes where I helped hundreds of students who struggled in understanding the course materials. I feel proud and fulfilled being able to serve others and contribute back to society. For that reason, I intend to write my letter hoping that it will help our future international students who are going to be joining our dear university shortly. I also think that this letter can be considered as a valuable lesson, particularly for the students who come from developing and under-developed countries as they are the most challenged due to their lack of English proficiency, drastic cultural differences, financial insolvency, and such.
Last semester, I had to go through a very stressful and challenging couple of months. How can someone go severely mentally disordered in a matter of a few days without having any prior history of mental issue? Can the stress we, the international students, face every day at Boise State significant enough to make us go through psychotic breaks? These were some of the questions I kept asking last semester. It was the last spring break. An international Honors College student of the Boise State University, a friend whom I know since high-school, Maruf Ahmed, was diagnosed with bipolar psychosis. Bipolar disorder is a mood disorder that features extreme mood swings, during which psychosis can occur. Psychosis refers to a disconnected view of reality. It might not be obvious how frightening bipolar psychosis can be for the person and others around by these definitions. To give you a small hint, let’s just say, instead of a mental hospital, Maruf had to stay in Ada County Jail for almost a month due to his psychotic behavior while we were still trying to make sense of the legal procedures implying that he needed immediate medical assistance, not jail time. Before sending him back to his home country, Bangladesh, I was able to ask Maruf, “Do you know why this happened? Would you blame the academic stress for this sudden mental illness?” Maruf replied, “I think I had to manage a lot without having any meaningful support system from the university. Immense course load, managing an internship, maintaining a job, being far away from family – all these things made me more and more troubled, and at one point it pushed me over the edge as I started having psychotic attacks.”
Every year, many students travel thousands of miles, leaving their friends and family behind, to a place utterly unfamiliar with the dreams of getting a better education. Being faced with a new set of basic values and beliefs, international students are continually challenged to accommodate themselves to a variety of cultural differences. Coping with the new environment and foreign culture can be incredibly stressful to these students. The constant pressure to maintain a good grade, unfriendly U.S. policies make the situation even worse. Several studies have concluded that international students tend to experience greater psychological problems than American students (Mori, 2000; Pedersen, 1991). Studies conducted on international student demographics have reported a variety of mental health and personal concerns including language barriers, academic difficulties, financial difficulties, interpersonal problems with American students as well as with their conational students, racial/ethnic discrimination, loss of social support, alienation, and homesickness (Mori, 2000; Pedersen, 1991). International students on the American college campus are a diverse and increasing population whose unique concerns are traditionally overlooked (Mori, 2000) As an international student myself, I can relate to these facts and believe that these problems are evident and can negatively affect our dear university. It’s time that we start talking about these issues and take effective measures to tackle the challenges. In my letter, I’d like to discuss why we should care about the under-represented international students at the Boise State University and investigate an ethically supported plan to help alleviate the issues these foreign students face.
Since ethics is concerned with what is right for individuals and society, my proposed solutions have to be supported by acceptable moral philosophies. For that reason, it’s imperative to analyze the solution through our ethical lenses with the guidance of an ethical framework. After looking at a few ethical frameworks, I decided to apply the four-way test (a practical ethical framework) as the questions mentioned in the test are easily comprehensible yet critical to examine for ethical analysis.
As described by the official Rotary International website, the Four-Way Test is a nonpartisan and nonsectarian ethical guide for Rotarians to use for their personal and professional relationships. The test consists of four fundamental questions.
- Is it the TRUTH?
- Is it FAIR to all concerned?
- Will it build GOODWILL and BETTER FRIENDSHIPS?
- Will it be BENEFICIAL to all concerned?
(“Guiding principles,” n.d.).
To answer the first question mentioned in the questionnaire, I’d like to refer to some facts that I gathered through a few days of research. According to a report published in Idaho Statesman on April 24, 2017, “Boise State University international student enrollment increased nearly 25 percent from 2013 to 2016 (Sewell, 2017).” Idaho’s international-student enrollment more than doubled from 2010 to 2015, from 2,112 to 4,501 (Sewell, 2017). Sadly, according to a study published in 2007, “Approximately 44% of international graduate students responded that they had had an emotional or stress-related problem that significantly affected their well-being or academic performance within the past year (Hyun et al., 2007).” What is even more depressing is that more than half of the college students in the United States do not receive treatment for their conditions (Nutt, 2019), and thus it can be notably worse for international students who have significant cultural and language barriers. Even though the paper explicitly referred to the graduate students, needless to say, the academic pressure for undergraduate students is much higher due to the increased numbers of credits required for graduation. Besides, “Most mental disorder first emerges between 15 and 24 (Kessier et al., 2005).” Since most undergraduate students at Boise State fall under this age limit, we can’t ignore the students who are doing their bachelors here. To be FAIR to all concerned, international students of all backgrounds, including undergraduate, graduate, post-graduate, should be given priorities for better mental health care.
I understand that our intention to assist under-represented international students can agitate the House Republicans who criticized the Boise State University for its diversity, equality, and inclusion initiatives (“Little’s State Board Search,” 2019). They might oppose any additional care towards the international students. With due respect to these lawmakers, I’d like to say that “those students added $112 million to Idaho’s economy during the 2015-16 academic year (Sewell, 2017).” I’d also like to remind the House Republicans that equalizing outcomes to balance unequal opportunities doesn’t create fairness because it ignores effort and talent. It denies an earned reward and saps initiative. Besides, I believe that the solutions I am going to propose will apply to all the students regardless of their race, ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, socio-economic status, age, country of origin, veteran status, abilities, spirituality, religious beliefs, and political beliefs. These resolutions can aid in reducing the rising mental health problems among U.S. college students (Crist, 2018). Therefore, it’s in our best interest that we consider implementing the solutions as it will be BENEFICIAL to all concerned.
I could talk about numerous studies and papers that indicates these mental issues faced by a large number of university students around the country and write many pages explaining why we should care about them. But, let’s keep that for another conversation and talk briefly about the things the Boise State University can do to help. I discussed the following solutions to a couple of my international friends and tried to connect my research and their ideas to identify a few practical solutions.
Promote Proactive Mental Health Care
Although the students need to be proactive about their physical and mental well-being, our professors can be a little more active in learning about their students’ psychological well-being too. Since most students do not want to acknowledge their mental health struggles where their peers are stigmatizing mental health treatment (Gaddis, 2018), we can start by introducing a mandatory well-being survey that asks about the student’s mental health multiple times over the semester, especially in STEM-related classes because of how bad most of the professors are in the STEM fields (Rico-Pekerol, 2019). In addition, Boise State University should consider training our professors to be more empathetic towards the students of minority groups since their poor language skills often diminish their ability to express their opinions and ask questions in classes orally. Based on the feedback received from the survey, our professors can then guide the troubled students towards appropriate resources available on campus and reevaluate the course content to minimize academic stress.
Reevaluate Course Content to Minimize Academic Stress
According to USNews.com, only 21% of all the students studying at Boise State University graduate in four years (“How Does Boise State,”, n.d.). Since most students don’t graduate in four years, the content creators of these courses might have mistaken thinking that they can add further contents to improve the quality of the course. In reality, the learners in these scenarios compare the experience with trying to drink water from a fire hose. Adding content to an already jam-packed syllabus puts us in a race to the course finish line—talking a mile a minute and leaving exhausted students in the dust (“More Content Doesn’t Equal,” 2015). It is also essential to recognize that in most cases, the international students don’t have the privilege to take more than four years to finish the program due to lack of scholarship opportunities and insensitive U.S. visa policy.
It’s time that the course authors start modernizing the course structures so that they are representative of the type of deep and meaningful learning we thrive to experience at the Boise State University. If we continue to view content as something that needs to be covered rather than as a fuel for meaningful learning, we are destined to fight a losing battle. That’s why the curriculum developers should consider “a shift in focus from covering content to using content: curriculum design also becomes less a matter of determining “what” to teach and more a matter of “how” to facilitate learning (“More Content Doesn’t Equal,” 2015).”
Increase Awareness and Investments
Findings suggest that educational and awareness campaigns can be especially effective for reducing unmet needs for mental health services, because factors related to knowledge and beliefs are strongly associated with perceived need and service use and are also commonly reported as reasons for not using services. Awareness campaigns can certainly demonstrate GOODWILL in improving students’ mental health. Greater investments in student mental health services may be essential. In addition, effective mechanisms to identify students with the most severe needs are essential, so that with the removal of barriers to care, systems can optimize the match between services and those who are likely to benefit most (Eisenberg et al., 2007).
Of course, this was not a comprehensive list of all the actions Boise State can take to support international students. “Despite the fact that international students, as a group, have many important commonalities, the types of their acculturative stress, cultural adjustment issues, and help-seeking behavior vary depending on such factors as ethnicity, gender, age, religious and linguistic backgrounds, sexual orientation, marital status, and area of residence in the U.S. Studies focused on these factors are scarce (Mori, 2000).” Because of these varying factors, further research is needed to create an effective action plan to alleviate the mental issues almost all college students go through.
Finally, I’d like to finish my letter stating a quote by my favorite poet, Rabindranath Tagore, a Nobel prize-winning Bengali poet. He once said, “You can’t cross the sea merely by standing and staring at the water (Tagore, n.d.).” Even though I admit that it can be very challenging for the university administration to take measures in solving the issues I discussed, I will still be optimistic and hope that you, as an important individual of the university, will take effective actions in resolving these issues and remain actively committed to promote diversity and inclusivity in alignment with Boise State University’s shared values.
Sincerely,
Nabil Rahman
Class of 2020
Computer Science Major
Honors College
Boise State University
References
Crist, C. (2018, November 1). Mental health diagnoses rising among U.S. college students. Retrieved from https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-mental-college/mental-health-diagnoses-rising-among-u-s-college-students-idUSKCN1N65U8.
Eisenberg, D., Golberstein, E., & Gollust, S. (2007). Help-seeking and access to mental health care in a university student population. Medical Care, 45(7), 594-601.
Gaddis, S., Ramirez, D., & Hernandez, E. (2018). Contextualizing public stigma: Endorsed mental health treatment stigma on college and university campuses. Social Science & Medicine, 197, 183-191. doi:10.1016/j.socscimed.2017.11.029
Guiding principles. (n.d.). Retrieved from https://my.rotary.org/en/guiding-principles.
How Does Boise State University Rank Among America’s Best Colleges? (n.d.). Retrieved from https://www.usnews.com/best-colleges/boise-state-university-1616.
Hyun, J., Quinn, B., Madon, T., & Lustig, S. (2007). Mental health need, awareness, and use of counseling services among international graduate students. Journal of American College Health, 56(2), 109-118. doi:10.3200/JACH.56.2.109-118
Kessler, R., Berglund, P., Demler, O., Jin, R., Merikangas, K., & Walters, E. (2005). Lifetime prevalence and age-of-onset distributions of dsm-iv disorders in the national comorbidity survey replication. Archives of General Psychiatry, 62(6), 593-602.
Little’s State Board Search. (2019, July 17). A short honeymoon: Tromp steps into a political crossfire. Retrieved from https://www.idahoednews.org/news/a-short-honeymoon-tromp-steps-into-a-political-crossfire/?utm_source=republish&utm_medium=web&utm_campaign=republish.
More Content Doesn’t Equal More Learning. (2015, October 12). Retrieved from https://www.facultyfocus.com/articles/curriculum-development/more-content-doesnt-equal-more-learning/.
Mori, S. (Chako). (2000). Addressing the Mental Health Concerns of International Students. Journal of Counseling & Development, 78(2), 137–144. doi:10.1002/j.1556-6676.2000.tb02571.x
Nutt, A. (2019, March 30). Report: More than half of mentally ill U.S. adults get no treatment. Retrieved from https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/to-your-health/wp/2016/10/19/report-more-than-half-of-mentally-ill-u-s-adults-get-no-treatment/.
Pedersen, P. B. (1991). Counseling international students. Counseling Psychologist, 19, 10-58.
Rico-Pekerol, T. (2019, February 2). Prioritizing students beyond Boise State’s retention rates. Retrieved from https://arbiteronline.com/prioritizing-students-beyond-boise-states-retention-rates/
Sewell, C. (2017, April 24). Fewer Middle Eastern students are enrolling at Boise State. Retrieved from https://www.idahostatesman.com/news/local/article146549254.html?fb_action_ids=10158654670720397&fb_action_types=og.
You can’t cross the sea merely by standing and staring at the water. Don’t let yourself indulge in vain wishes. (n.d.). Retrieved from https://www.quotes.net/quote/52249.