Ming Hui applied for a one-year master’s degree in the UK after quitting her job. Just after she got the offer, she caught the epidemic and she hasn’t been able to walk around the school or meet her teachers. She felt more like a jobless person than a student as such. She didn’t even have a student card, but a graduate study abroad career did begin, on a small floating window in her bedroom at home in Hefei.
The expensive airfare back to school, the inability to guarantee security, the difficulty in renewing visas, and the possibility of applying to good schools down the road …… realistic dilemmas continue to squeeze international students out of their already few options. For a variety of reasons, more and more international students are beginning to study at home.
Jet lag, procrastination and depression
After coming back from the United States, international student Eddie Liu’s first summer class was in the early morning of July. He turned off his webcam and only turned on the sound of the teacher’s lecture, listening to the lecture while taking a shower. At that moment, he felt like he was back to the time when he was in the Internet class at home. He always felt that he couldn’t listen to the class, and the teacher at the other end of the screen could only see his face, and he couldn’t even see his eyes clearly, so he simply played with his phone by himself. He thought, “I’m going back to school next semester, so I can’t go back to online classes. But half a year has passed, and he still hasn’t been able to return to the United States.
Zhang Chen is back in March, the day before departure, she specially stayed up without sleep, the transfer 40 hours too long, she wanted to sleep on the plane, so that they will not think about it. But on the way, the lime powder on the gloves rubbed his skin, goggles and protective clothing smothered her unable to sleep, and sleepy and uncomfortable. After landing, it was 14 days of quarantine. Dad sent a box of fruit from the quarantine hotel, opened all the smell of disinfectant water. The day she came home, the neighborhood magnolias were in bloom and there was a silent beauty. She had a feeling of rebirth.
But the days after that, every night, she was alone with the lights on, waiting for her 2 a.m. or 4 a.m. class. In the summertime when she was doing her homework in her room, the curtains were left open, and from 4 o’clock she could see the sky slowly dawn. It was rare to see the sky slowly darken and lighten up again.
Most of her classmates were up, and in between homework and class, we gathered to talk about the things that mattered most: whether to Gap, how to find a good internship, when to go back to school, what to do when the visa expired ….. A chat down, the problem is not solved, but we are increasingly anxious.
Zhang Chen became one of the more and more international students who started taking antidepressants. In order to avoid the side effects, she usually gets up at 6am to take the medication once and then goes back to sleep, if there is a reaction like hand numbness or vomiting, it will not be so uncomfortable when it happens while sleeping.
Eddie Liu will fall asleep after 4 a.m. every day, playing with his phone, writing papers, reading literature, his biological clock is completely reversed, and he can’t sleep when he lies down before 4 a.m. He thought that it might be the pressure brought by the Internet class, or the worries of the final exam, in short, the whole person’s mood was very depressed.
When he couldn’t sleep at night, Eddie Liu would look at the 2020 Hardship Study Abroad group on Douban. The group members like to ask themselves over and over again whether there is a chance to resume normal teaching in the study abroad country before next summer, and no one can give an answer, and the comment section finally becomes a record of everyone’s stress and anxiety at this moment together.
There is no way to focus on learning is the feeling of most international students who return home. Eddie Liu used to be in school and take six exams in one semester. For the best result, he would apply for a deferment depending on the situation and have more preparation time. Now, he started to abuse the teacher’s tolerance and applied for an extension for every class that he could postpone to submit his work. It’s not because he wants to prepare more, it’s just because “the work never seems to be done” at home.
Zhang Chen’s teacher did not require her to watch all the videos on the same day. She occasionally went to watch them, and then she got used to dragging them out, until the last week, when she saved all the course videos together and found that she could write the final assignment without watching the videos, and finally stayed up for two big nights and wrote the assignment in a daze.
In the first two years of college, Eddie Liu was a business and management major in China, taking public elective and basic courses, a large classroom crowded with hundreds of people, basically without any sense of participation. In his junior year, he made up his mind to go abroad to study social sciences, and only then did he finally receive his first small class of 10 people, where everyone started discussing a certain topic, like a It was like a seminar. For the first time, he felt that he could learn very happily, “especially a sense of accomplishment”. That semester, when choosing classes, he researched each professor’s recent publications, considered how many people would be in the class, made sure each class was one he wanted to take, wrote down his weekly office hours in the class schedule, and went to talk to the professor every week.
But now, the ideal state of learning that had only just arrived came to an abrupt end. Half a world away, it seems like a big deal to even finish an online class without any problems.
The class lasted from 1:00 am to 4:00 am. Later, he wanted to give up, and the anxiety of repeatedly asking himself “is it worth it” replaced the thrill of learning: after paying $30,000 for a semester, the self-discipline was gone. The self-restraint mechanism was gone. The motivation is also obviously weaker. The virtuous circle and atmosphere of discussing and learning from each other with classmates is gone, and all the good learning experiences are gone. Now, the online class has become something that just keeps him doing homework and reading books.
The only thing that kept him motivated to work extra hard was the pressure of his GPA.
Suddenly knocked back into shape, Eddie Liu had a hard time accepting this, “If you let me go to online classes, why did I go abroad at that time? “
Can not return home
After deciding “not to waste this year” and taking online classes at home, Ming Hui found that her home actually did not have a table for her to study.
After leaving home at the end of the college entrance exams, she did not live at home, her study table was sold, her mother and father’s desk was full of her own things, and the only thing left available was the lift-up coffee table in the living room. But in the public area of the Internet class, trying to answer questions and participate in class discussions in front of the family, Ming Hui felt, “That’s too shameful.
She took a cushion and put it on the small window in her bedroom, folded her legs and sat cross-legged, then put the computer on the small table with low legs, and either her legs went numb or her back hurt after one class.
Because the network is sometimes bad, Ming Hui likes to turn on the sound of online classes to the maximum, the door is hidden, the family cat likes to crash the door, the English language echoed throughout the house. Ming Hui’s father joked that her bedroom was like a British Concession and that it would be more ceremonial to hang a British flag in her room.
Unlike international students who come back from abroad and change their classes online, Ming Hui applied for a one-year master’s degree in the UK after quitting her job. She didn’t even have a student card, but a graduate study abroad career did begin, on her own little floating window in her bedroom.
After many years of not living with her parents at home, the conflict between the two generations gradually emerged during the year of studying abroad at home. Last New Year’s Eve, Eddie Liu also stayed home for only six days before returning to Beijing. The lifestyles of the two generations are vastly different. No folding quilts, no room tidying, there will always be something that his parents are not used to, he thought, he was alone outside the same way to live a good life, how to come out so many more rules as soon as he came home.
One day at dinner, Zhang Chen thought his dad was cooking well and ate a few more bites, and his mom quickly stopped him, “Okay, don’t eat any more. Mom’s restrictions are everywhere, not letting her eat too much and pushing her to lose weight every day; not letting her do her nails, so she has to do a less conspicuous nude color herself; and not letting her dye her hair or apply bright lipstick.
This semester, although there are no more early morning classes, but Zhang Chen always do homework late at night, in the morning, the family will wake her up, and when they do not get up, they will be very angry. The older generation would always question, “You’re too inefficient, what’s wrong with you”. In the evening after dinner, she would like to go back to her room and stay by herself, but her father, who came back from work, wanted his daughter to stay with him.
For Zhang Chen, the days of freedom were gone. When she was in Boston, she secretly dyed her hair several times and got lip piercings so she could do everything a 19-year-old girl wants to do. When videoing with her family, she could get by with a hat or mask.
She also applied for a job at school, working as a stage manager in the school library for 10 hours a week, earning $150, which was enough to cover her living expenses when she wasn’t buying anything big. Living in Beijing after returning to China was costing her parents $4,000 a month. She made up her mind to move to Shanghai next semester and get an internship that would earn her own money and reduce family conflicts at the same time.
The many, small changes
Many things that were logical were disrupted. Studying abroad at home means more than just a change of space and being away from the familiar environment of teaching. There are more small, but not negligible, changes hidden in this year.
For Humanities and Social Sciences, it was more difficult to apply for funding for social research than in previous years because it was not in the city where the school was located, and Eddie Liu’s social research was considered to have a travel component. The mentor helped negotiate for a long time, and eventually could only wait for a small reimbursement after entry, but that was still only a verbal commitment.
Since studying abroad, Ming Hui did the most things is to go to Taobao to ask English PDF on behalf of finding services, while looking for several, and finally together to put together the current issue of the complete book. Zhang Chen, who studies journalism, has lost the practical venue that most courses need to use, and there are fewer and fewer courses to choose from. Because of the network, Eddie Liu often had courses that required software that could not be downloaded, and in order not to affect her GPA, she eventually had to choose to withdraw from courses that she was not in a position to take – in the end, only three courses were left.
Many of the original concepts were shattered. Eddie Liu thought that maybe this is why most international students are so unhappy. He was convinced that he was living a “global citizen” lifestyle and that he would observe various globalization phenomena when he returned home. But after the epidemic, the anti-globalization trend became more and more pronounced, and international relations became complicated. The concept of global citizenship suddenly became fragile, and she wondered if the life she once lived was real.
The epidemic has also given rise to a number of industries. Weibo user @Lucy_intheSkywithDiamonds posted that a Chinese student in her own class died in a car accident in mid-November, but after her death, the student’s account continued to turn in assignments, take quizzes, and email all of her teachers, and recently turned in her final paper for the class and several extra credits – again bringing the phenomenon of online class escrow to the public.
Eddie Liu said that ghostwriting is actually not new, after leaving the country, their Instagram and WeChat has been a ghostwriting agent to add friends, even a dozen people in the professional small class group, there will be people mixed in to send ads. The company is also a member of the Board of Directors of the University of California.
Since online classes are taught, there are no strict restrictions on whether or not the camera is on, and most people believe that foreigners can’t tell what an Asian looks like. In the first class at the beginning of the semester, the instructor will sort out what needs to be done for the semester, including the timeline for each assignment to be turned in, and will be able to see all the assignment requirements on the commonly used assignment system, Canvas. Usually, all that is needed is to hand in your account password, and the online class escrow can go very smoothly.
According to the Xiaoxiang Morning Post, some study abroad agencies in Shanghai also have a substitute class business, and the fees are not cheap. For an undergraduate major course with only one month of class time, it costs 8,000 RMB just to give the class assignments and the final paper to a ghostwriting team to get a C grade (passing).
Zhang Chen asked how much she earns from writing papers for people, and the fee for three small papers is usually 10,000 RMB. She was a little tempted to earn a little more pocket money, but in the end she couldn’t be ruthless. In case she was found out, she would be investigated by the university’s academic committee and heavily repatriated.
The epidemic has also spawned various entrepreneurial programs, and because of U.S. regulations, foreigners (except U.S. citizens, permanent residents and their immediate family members) who have visited China in the past 14 days will be temporarily banned from entering the country. Many international students have to aim for a third country to go to the program, which international students jokingly call “whitewashing” before going to the United States. A team of entrepreneurs called “Everything from Cambodia” targeted this business opportunity and offered two routes for international students to enter the U.S. through Cambodia or Singapore for The price is 38,999 yuan.
Eddie Liu does not yet know what will happen in the future, if they have been online classes, they can not enter the country, the visa will expire after five months after leaving the United States, but reactivation is not an easy task. In the six months between April and September this year, the U.S. issued only 808 F1 student visas to mainland China, compared to 90,410 issued in the same period in 2019, a drop of more than 99 percent year-on-year.
In the Douban 2020 tough study group, visa anxiety under the topic of people constantly follow the post, a variety of uncertainty stirred their emotions, “a whole year are at home online classes, next semester is also still online classes, until now there is no visa, do not know when you can start the process “, “I am the same as the owner, no visa, this semester and next semester are in the domestic classes, at first also special anxiety can not sleep “, “I am also, my mother and I previously intended to go to Cambodia in January, it seems that recently Cambodia can not, and intend to go to Singapore, but I heard that the visa issued by Singapore Not many” ……
When she first got the offer, Ming Hui also considered whether to extend her stay for a year. She was advised by her university classmate who was a study abroad agent that since the UK reopened its work visa last year, the number of applications she had handled for studying in the UK had increased three times compared to previous years. After one year, Ming Hui was not sure if she could still apply to a better school.
There were also opportunities to study in the UK. In the first half of the year, Ming Hui’s course was divided into offline and online classes, but one of the students in the offline class soon contracted the New Coronavirus, and other students and teachers went for nucleic acid testing. Thinking of the risks she might face, Ming Hui said she was “scared and lazy” and decided to stay in China so she could still see her friends every week.
She reassured herself that the study abroad experience might be gone, but at least the degree she was going to get was real.
(At the request of the interviewees, Ming Hui, Eddie Liu and Zhang Chen are pseudonyms in this article)
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