I am from Rio Bravo, Tamaulipas, Mexico. Whenever I introduce myself to someone, they may know where it is, or they might confuse it with Reynosa, Tamaulipas, a city right next to it. Mostly, everyone knows Rio Bravo is less than an hour away, so it is not that bad living out of town, right?
The thing is, I have been a foreign student for approximately five years. When I was 14 years old, my parents sent me to a boarding school in Kingsville to improve my English for “a year.” But then, after that year, it became another and another, until I finally graduated from high school.
Almost everyone who attended that school were also foreign students: some even from countries such as Rwanda, Kenya, South Korea, Venezuela, etc. So, it was almost like I was not allowed to complain about being from Rio Bravo, which is only two hours away from Kingsville, because “they had it worse.”
However, I never saw it as a competition of who was the farthest away from home because we were all going through the same thing. We were all so young trying to learn a foreign language while also trying to decide what would be the next step in our lives. To be honest, we were
so pressured in school that being in college does not even feel like that much work anymore. I was so accustomed to being out of my dorm room from 7 a.m. until almost 12 hours later, when I would finally come back after all the daily activities.
I think what really matters about being a foreign student is acknowledging all the people who are supporting you to achieve your goals and to complete your education. The reason why everyone tries so hard is because there may be someone back home hoping you are safe, that you are healthy, that you are eating, that you make friends or that you are not alone. With time, we all learn to take care of ourselves, we become independent and the real pressure is to not disappoint whoever expects the best from us.
I believe I speak for every other foreign student when I express how hard it is to, once again, get accustomed to the routine after you come back from the break. Now, we need to walk to school, ride our bikes, while some lucky ones can ride in their cars to go to school. We also need to start making our own food and doing our laundry. The list of the things we all do to survive the semester can continue because we all make sacrifices. And be certain, they will be worth it when we have our diploma.
When I look back at the time my parents decided I would study in the United States, I never imagined I would last all these years, or that I would end up pursuing an English degree at UTRGV. I am 19 years old now and, while I have experienced some insecurities about my English grammar or my pronunciation and how hard it was to decide the career I wanted to follow, I do not regret ever starting this path.
