Hello everyone! I hope everyone is doing well. I would like to share my short experience while studying in the United States of America. I moved from Timor-Leste to Wisconsin in August 2023 to start my education. I began studying at Fox Valley Technical College in Appleton, WI.

I started making friends and connections with other international students. After a few days, we took a tour around the school, caught the buses, and explored the main area of Appleton, which helped us when we wanted to go grocery shopping or hang out.

On my first day of school, I felt nervous and a little scared about who I would sit with in class, who my instructor would be, and what the education system would look like.

I observed that the classroom environment was very different from my home country of Timor-Leste, where all the students paid attention to the lessons prepared online and focused on their own laptops.

I am not familiar with Blackboard, and it's a bit difficult for me to learn like other students in the class. Normally, students won't talk to each other unless they already know each other or if they are really good friends. But at that moment, I was having difficulty and I did not even care. I decided to talk to my friends and ask for help from those who were sitting next to me to explain what I did not understand.

In addition to asking my friends, I also tried to get help from all the instructors to explain how to study all the lessons on Blackboard, how to work on assignments, and how to do the exams through it. During the first semester in the first and second weeks, I felt overwhelmed. But I did not want to feel the same way while studying here, so I started to talk to my advisor, asking them to connect me with other people who could help me in any area that I found difficult.

The conclusion from what I have experienced in the first semester is that the key to solving my difficulties is to communicate. When you ask, you will find the way to get your solutions.