Early on a Saturday morning, just two days before the end of Spring Break, I sat in the driver’s seat of a parked school car. The digits on the dashboard glowed brightly in the dark: it was 6:32. A moment later, a figure in hoodie and jeans stood outside the window and waved. Recognizing that it was Valens Niyigena, one of the students I was to pick up, I opened the car door for him. Satoshi Nikaido, Valens’ roommate, followed suit soon after. During the time when most students would be sound asleep, Valens and Satoshi fought the morning chill to make a 40-minute commute to West Des Moines to take the Test of English as a Foreign Language, or TOEFL. This was their second time taking the test and the stakes were high; since they are international students, a passing TOEFL score is required in order to enroll in the ISU courses of their major.

Those of us who grew up in the U.S. often take our education for granted. I often overhear my classmates complaining about how unfair a professor was or how long an assignment had to be. We are blessed with the opportunities for good education and fulfilling careers, so much that we often expected these things to just fall into our laps. But for many outside the country, such opportunities are limited and they come to the States for school just to secure a desirable future.

Many international students at Iowa State leave their friends and family to dedicate months or even years to getting their degrees. Satoshi, whose home is in Japan, came to the U.S. less than half a year ago. He, like Valens, is a Fulbright scholar. They underwent the application for this highly competitive, merit-based scholarship just so they could study in the U.S. Satoshi is attending Iowa State to get a Master’s in swine genetics, knowledge that he would bring back to his job in Japan. Satoshi has a wife and a little boy back home with whom he regularly keeps in touch.  

When asked how long it took to study for the test, Valens responded with”he whole spring break,” and Satoshi admitted to doing to same. At first I thought they were kidding, for who in their right minds would spend their entire break studying for a test? However, they assured me that they had in fact dedicated the entire week to prepping for this day. I thought about how I spent my break surfing the web and watching movies, and I suddenly felt a twinge of guilt. Here were two guys treasuring every moment in school, even during off-time, while I spend the day watching “The Hobbit” for the third time.     

I am not the best student, and a regular procrastinator. Important assignments or presentations are put off right before the deadline because I am confident in my ability to just “wing it” last minute.

Listening to the international students speak about their difficulty with the language barrier brought my questionable school work ethic into perspective. Shuhan Zhang is an international student from China majoring in elementary education. Not only does she have a hefty course load, she also has to read all the text in her non-native language. I can safely say that she works twice as hard in school than I do and is paying twice as much in tuition, yet I don’t treat school with nearly as much seriousness as I should.

“I better get an A for this class ’cause I really worked hard,” whispered one of my group members to me during class. The funny thing was she did not do as well as she proclaimed, and yet she expected the professor to hand her the A just because she “worked hard.” Sometimes, we forget that the reason we are in school is to learn new skills and explore knowledge of the world beyond our social bubble, not to put up our defenses when we are required to do some deep thinking. 

Students who had to leave their home country to get an education understand its value and importance for their future.  For most of us, our home is a commute away from school. Imagine going to school in a different country and trying to learn a new language while keeping up with your classes at the same time. Just because education is readily available to us does not mean we are privileged to not work for it. If anything, we should appreciate and make the most out of the education that is sought after by the majority of the world.