There is always a point in your life where the perception of living abroad or simply being overseas is considered a luxury. You tell people you’re going to another country for whatever reasons and it will almost always be glorified.
That judgement is also prevalent among Malaysian students, between those who have the opportunity of studying abroad and the ones who study locally. Almost as if there was segregation by privilege.
On the other side of the grass however, are Malaysians who might argue that being fortunate has nothing to do with whether or not they study overseas.
I interviewed 3 Malaysian students (whose names have been changed for anonymity) who are currently in a university abroad, to challenge the glorification of living overseas.
Adam: “I’m Under Heavy Pressure To Deliver.”
When my family decided to send me to the UK for my university studies, they banked a huge chunk of their savings on me, and it’s only fair to assume that they expect nothing less than my best in return.
And to me, it was never just about getting the right grades and doing well in school. I see it as an investment that my family has made in me with the expectations of planning a better life for us all after university.
Though they’ve never said it, this includes securing a stable career here in the UK, making more money than I could back home to help support not only myself but also my family, and maybe even start a family of my own here.
You can only imagine the number of sleepless nights I’ve had thinking about this, though I’m pretty sure that I could be exaggerating the expectations placed on me.
I’m currently in my final year of my Bachelor of Engineering degree, and if I don’t graduate with Honours, the chances of me working at a top engineering firm are slim. Which also means, it will take me one extra step to achieve my goals for my family.
I ended up checking in for weekly visits to a therapist as my anxiety eventually got the best of me.
Don’t get me wrong, the pressure of ensuring a stable future coming out of any university back home is also very real. The gamble of sending your kids to university can be heavier on some families than others, the stakes are just a lot higher for mine.
Jason: “I Dealt With Racism.”
We’ve read the stories all over social media about classic racism or stereotyping that happens in the western world. Regardless of where that Singaporean boy was from, he was still beaten up in the middle of London as a foreigner, helpless.
We don’t have the privilege of walking around the streets within the comfort of our own home country. I’m not as familiar with the man at the corner of my campus selling donuts, as I am with the mak cik who sells nasi lemak 30 meters down the road from my house back in KL.
To be very candid, I was never really aware of this dichotomy until I was racially harassed by a local Englishman on the bus. I was seated, on my way to do some grocery shopping in the middle of the day, minding my own business, when he started mocking and threatening to hurt me as he made racist remarks from a seat on the row behind me.
The elderly man started yelling at me “Why don’t you go back to where you came from, eh?” out of nothing, repeatedly. He then chucked some of his, what felt like, chips that he was snacking on at the time towards me. I turned around and saw the bag of chips in one hand and a bottle of liquor in the other.
There was really nothing I could do, nor did I really want to, if I’m being honest. Needless to say, I was bothered, but what caught my attention even more was that there wasn’t a single person on that bus that stepped in to defend me when it happened.
This first-hand experience of the incident made it apparent to me that at the time, I didn’t have my family around me like I usually would if I was back home. I didn’t have the same protection. And most importantly, I didn’t feel safe.
I have always been aware that incidents like these are not uncommon, I’ve heard very similar stories from other fellow international students long before this incident even happened. It just took that unfortunate afternoon on the bus to make me fully understand that this is a very serious issue.
Eventually, I just took that as a learning stage, to help me mature quicker. I kept on telling myself that was the point of living in another country by myself in the first place, to be independent and handle situations, especially hostile ones on my own.
I was nowhere near glad that what happened, happened to me, there wasn’t any other way around it. I couldn’t have avoided it.
Cheryl: “There Is A Difference Between Travelling and Living Overseas.”
I’ve been to the US for holidays a couple of times prior to going there for college. But this time, there were no trips to Disneyland for me to look forward to, I wasn’t going to be staying in a nice hotel, and the biggest difference was, it was going to be an entire year before I got to see my family again.
Growing up in PJ, I was born into a middle-class family where both my parents are bankers. My younger brother and I have a significant bond with our parents as well as with each other. We were inseparable.
Needless to say, it was very difficult to leave my family at the airport before getting on that plane. It was not only until when I left home, that the transition made me realize how fortunate I was to have a loving and strong support system around me on call 24/7.
What was most unexpected about this was that I underestimated how lonely I could be. Just the thought of being tens of thousands of kilometers away from everything that I’ve ever known all by myself really took a toll on my mental health.
I barely made any friends, never really had the motivation to do anything, and only attended my classes because I had to live up to my responsibilities. At this point, it became very apparent that I have been underestimating the decline of my mental health severely.
Everything felt so foreign, and nothing really resonated with me. Not the food, not the company, and especially not the weather. Days when it got cold were the worst, I would isolate myself in my room, not leaving for no reason and surviving only on chocolate.
It was miserable.
It took me a couple of semesters before I tried to constantly remind myself that this experience was never meant to be easy, that I was here not for leisure but for a commitment. I realized that I couldn’t go on like this any longer and I eventually started to find my rhythm by meeting the right people, involving myself in social activities, be it college ones or simply hanging out with friends.
I still miss my family. But at the end of the day, this step in my life is necessary and I’d like to think that it’ll ultimately shape my character.
There Is No Place Like Home
One might often be highly overrated for having a life overseas, but what seems to be often overlooked is the possibility of it not always turning out great. These stories instead encapsulate the dramatic ‘dark side’ of living abroad, and the ugly realities our interviewees have experienced.
These students challenged the general perception of being fortunate enough to be in a position where it offers them the opportunity of taking their studies abroad.
They argue that while having a fair amount of privilege, it comes with a price-working twice as hard in the countries that they’re in just to earn a spot in a career because their family depend on them heavily, for example.
A lot of times, we see people who ask for what they don’t have, and I feel this is a prime example of how the grass is not always greener on the other side. Some students studying in local universities would give anything to have the opportunity to venture their horizons further and take their education abroad, while some studying overseas would just want to be home to take a gamble on the daily unexpected Malaysian weather.
With that being said, it’s safe to say that most of us can agree that there is no greater comfort than being surrounded by the four walls of familiar love by the people you know best.
For more stories like this, read: I Am A Uni Student by Day And I Write Erotica After Dark and In 2012, My School Experienced Mass Hysteria Where Students Ran and Screamed Like Demons
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