Tennessee Tech University Department of Computer Science Blog

It was 3 AM when I woke up on August 7, 2012, to catch my 30-hour flight to the United States. It was not a big deal to wake up that early. Rather, I was a little worried about my next 5 years. Alright, let’s be real – I was terrified to leave home for a country with a completely different culture, mentality, and language. But the decision was made and I was flying to Cookeville, TN to pursue my Master’s degree in Computer Science. Cookeville… A little town – in the middle of nowhere – it really soon became my second home.

By the time I said bye to my family and successfully passed through security gates, I realized that I will be studying in ENGLISH. Naturally, I had to take English-proficiency tests before coming to the US. But when English is the language that you use only when you type website addresses in the address bar, speaking and understanding the language may become an issue. About an hour before reaching Chicago Airport, a stewardess announced something like “we are … air … paper … si”. As you can see, those airplane noises overlapping with my neighbors’ polemic discussion about the freshness of the fish they ate yesterday certainly “facilitated” my understanding what kind of paper everyone needed to sign. I have been a student for a while, so I know better that if I did not hear what the teacher said on the exam, I better ask the teacher before making a big mistake. So, I asked the stewardess to explain what to do when she approached me. And even after that I could not understand what is going on. Eventually. I asked my neighbor to help me figure out how to fill in the paperwork and, afterwards, continued listening to a white noise coming from the airplane’s engines, thinking “Well, great. How in a world will I understand teachers and peers if I cannot really get what people say here?”.

After a long prelude, let’s fast forward to a day when I took my first class. It was not too bad, to be honest. I understood about half of what the teacher was saying. Eventually, I convinced myself that it went well. I had only one class that day and after coming back home, I stared at the book for about an hour and read the first chapter. After reading the book, I knew that the only way to survive the tests is to read the material right after the class. My problem was that every time I heard something or tried to speak, I first translated it in Russian and only then attempted to understand it. It took me about 6 months to get used to thinking completely in English…

One day I was walking out from the Roaden University Center and ran into an American friend that I have previously met only a few times. He said, “What’s up?”. I instantly replied in all seriousness, “Ehm, I do not know. Aah, you mean, clouds? Yeah, it’s kind of cloudy today… Is it some kind of tricky question?”. Apparently, I cracked him up but I was standing there, totally confused. Later, he explained me what that meant and at that point we moved on to do our errands. The next day I ran into him again, in Bruner Hall. He said, “What’s up?”, and continued walking as if he did not ask it. I stopped for a second and said, “A lot of things, actually. I had a few problems with understanding the material but luckily the professor is video-recording the lectures. It really helps, I have never seen anybody recording the lectures before, quite a neat thing to put them all online.” In the middle of my sentence, my friend stopped, turned around and looked at me like I was out of my mind. He approached me closer and said something like, “Haha, awesome, dude. Never expected you to reply though. Here people just say ‘not much’ and go on”. That was a surprise to me because back in my home country, if anybody asked you “What’s up?”, you literally tell them what is going on. Cultural shock, so to speak.

Source: https://wxtp.files.wordpress.com/2012/10/comic.png?w=788

When I was taking my first test, I was confident that I could make at least 90 on it (that was a naïve assumption). A few minutes later (after the exam has started), I changed my mind and my estimation immediately dropped to 50. It happened after reading the first two assignments, 20 points each. I just could not comprehend what the professor was asking. For the next ten minutes, I was staring at the paper in front of me and did not have the slightest idea where to begin. I singled out my problem as not understanding the meanings of certain words like “faucet” and “jug”. After a little bit of thinking, I made a decision to ask the teacher what those words meant. To be honest, I felt awkward to ask about the meaning of those words but I did not see another way out. Keeping in mind that I wanted at least 90 on my first test, I asked the professor about those words. Surprisingly to me, the teacher did not think that the questions were stupid and explained me their meanings in simple terms. It took me 15 minutes to find some courage and ask the questions. In less than a minute I received the answers. Afterwards, I successfully finished those assignments and received close to 40 points for them.

Even though I had many misunderstandings and difficulties with speaking English, Tennessee Tech and Computer Science Department welcomed me the best way possible. The international office was of a great help, especially with all those tech-buddy and international gatherings programs. The CS faculty was outstanding in helping me get up on my feet after being run over with a language barrier. Special thanks to my advisor, Dr. Ambareen Siraj, and CS secretary, Ms. Valerie Nash, who helped me understand how things work in the Department. Dr. Siraj showed care and support in my graduate studies as well as my personal development – an extremely kind and thoughtful professor. All teachers in CS were immensely approachable to help me, nobody judged my speaking and spelling skills. Tennessee Tech is like a small village where everyone knows each other and CS department is one of the cordial families there. Since 2012, I substantially improved in language abilities thanks to my American host family, friends, advisor, and CS faculty, who spent time to explain things in different ways so that I could understand special terminology and concepts. Kudos to the community at Tech!

Studying abroad is a challenging journey and I have a few things that I want to share with other international students; things that personally helped me “git er done”:

• Make friends. Start with international students because there is nobody else on campus who are in the same shoes as you. Your American friends can definitely help you understand the culture, dialect, and idioms.
• Speak every time possible. It is important to jump over your fear of speaking English and talk, talk, talk. At the beginning, people may not understand half of what you are saying. But they are there to listen to you, so speak aloud and think how to improve your speaking abilities. Analyze the way natives pronounce words and try to imitate them – try to improve your pronunciation.
• Get to know the faculty. Computer Science Department has extremely friendly professors so do not be shy to ask questions about things you have not understood in class and during exams.
• Have get-together with your friends from time to time. It helps relieve stress, share struggles, and just have fun.
• Join clubs. For fun and personal development.
• If you work on a team project, make sure that you participate in the discussions. Show your interest.
• Do you like singing? Well, you should. That is actually one of the best ways to sharpen your speaking skills. Just saying.

Fast forward to October 2016: I am currently teaching Principles of Computing course and getting closer to receiving a Ph.D. degree (in less than 8 months). Studying at Tech has been quite a roller-coaster, a great one for sure. It has changed everything in my life (in a good sense): from the way I perceive the world, to the way I communicate with people. There are many details that I skipped and those may become my next blog post! See y’all.

~Vitaly Ford