Days of Our Life--Episode 3: Stay or Go Back (I)

Hi everyone,

In this episode I want to talk about one of the typical issues that most oversea students are facing, that is where they should go after their graduation, stay or go back their home countries.

It’s been six months since I first came to Perth. I have known many Chinese here and I found that the topic they talked most was whether or not they should apply for a Permanent Residence or even Australian Citizenship. Most of them, in order to gain a higher assessment grade, have changed their majors into Accounting, IT, or Engineering, which makes their life harder because they have to struggle with totally new knowledge besides a totally new language. Apart from that, they leave they hometown for a strange country, thus it’s quite common to feel perplexed when they lose the sense of belongings.

Despite those hardships, however, they make every effort to conquer the difficulties and insist on their dreams. Sometimes, ‘life is magic’ as Vivian—my interviewee in this episode and next—told me how her life experienced up and down and how she decided to change the frustrating period into an actively confronting one. No one can keep successful at all times, but one cannot give up dream at any time. It was this sort of spirit that impressed me most when I talked with Vivian and I believe that her experience and performance represent the rest of Chinese oversea students.

This episode mainly takes the form of recalling Vivian’s first half year in Perth. In order to earn her living expense by herself she had to take several part-time jobs, which took much of her time; poor English prevent her from understanding the lectures. She was so discouraged at that time that thought about giving up her plan and going back to China. She didn’t feel like that Australia was the right place for her and began to suspect her choice.

However, as she told me, ‘be-good is a habit’, she won’t let herself give in that easily and start to make changes. This part will come with next episode.