College essays about immigrant parents have been part of the curriculum for ages. It is sporadic for students to get a forum allowing them to share their experiences with fellow students and lecturers. Their incorporation into the education system is to allow the appreciation of immigrant students and their backgrounds. Therefore, college essays on immigrant parents create a space to learn more about various upbringings, creating a newly found respect for people’s experiences.
This article will highlight various aspects of essays concerning immigrant parents. The importance of these essays, challenges faced by immigrant parents and their impact on the children, examples of college essays on immigrant parents, and tips on how to write these essays will be discussed in the article.
Importance of college essays on immigrant parents
The education system in the 21st century has had applaudable efforts in integrating various aspects within the curriculum. Appreciation elements incorporated in the syllabus have also brought solutions to problems among school students, such as harassment and bullying. In addition, giving insights into people’s backgrounds allows students to fledge admiration and respect for their counterparts. The following are the importance of COLLEGE ESSAYS ABOUT IMMIGRANT PARENTS:
- Appreciating people’s backgrounds and culture
The best form of education is acquired through experience. Students have sat through several history lessons highlighting Mexican or Hispanic history. However, nothing beats these lessons, such as one-on-one engagement with a fellow student which foreign roots. Interaction with these students allows more insight into their backgrounds and culture. With a spice of school-organized events such as cultural days, students experience the magnificence of other cultures surrounding them and get a slice of the world’s vastness.
College essays also give acumens on the struggles encountered by immigrant parents as they try to provide the best for their children.
- Creating diversity within the institution.
The spectacle of having students gracing the colleges with their differences can be whimsical. Likewise, experiencing people in their cultural and national attires would be a sight to admire. However, due to college policies or the embarrassment of embracing one’s roots, it may be challenging to identify the diversity of cultures and nationalities within an institution.
College essays on immigrant parents spark and promote diversity within an institution. It also allows students to know and treat each other better after acquiring knowledge of their counterpart’s histories and backgrounds. Learning about the nationalities of students within the institution may also promote events set to appreciate the diversity and various opportunities offered to them.
- Sheds more light on how to treat immigrant students
Knowledge is power, and the lack of it may cast blindness on essential aspects required for smooth development. Immigrant students or students with immigrant parents have been subject to harassment and bullying for ages. They have also been socially cast out and considered different. Progressively, this has created unadmirable traits such as fear, anxiety, depression, and stress.
Essays about immigrant students or students with immigrant parents may bring many to tears. Most of these students have encountered daunting challenges to be graced with college opportunities. These essays, therefore, offer guidance to students and lecturing s on how to treat these students. The papers allow the identification of triggers and discernment of ways to tread with the students and make them feel welcomed and cozy within the school environment.
- Finding out your roots.
It would be ignorant to assume that all students cognize their roots. Parents may have wanted to shield their children from their struggle stories or may not have found it necessary to make their children aware of their backgrounds. College essays on immigrant parents allow students to dig further into their roots and experiences. It also allows them to appreciate their parents’ efforts in raising and providing their amenities.
- Morphing new perspectives
The mind is like a river that flows to no bounds. Limiting the reason would be challenging, as it is natural to want to experience it.
According to travel advisors, one main reason for travel is to free your mind from being jammed in a furrow. Our environment highly constitutes our behaviors and characteristics. The mind goes as far as the eyes can see and the ears hear. New and captivating experiences change the game plan and improve our perspectives.
Interactions with students from various backgrounds are ideal for creating new perspectives. It allows you to learn that viewpoints are not always similar, and there is plenty more to learn about beyond our environment. Trying out new cultures and foods will leave a raw and unexplored craving in your mind, which drives you to significant ends, thus acquiring new perspectives on life.
Challenges faced by immigrant parents
Every parent dreams that their children encounter a better life than they did. Immigrant parents often get too engrossed in setting out for greener pastures, and their children may not realize their challenges.
Immigrant parents have been in dire straits as they look to provide a better future for their children. The challenges faced by immigrant parents include:
- Fear of being deported
Daunting thoughts of fear of being banished have terrorized the minds of immigrant parents for far too long. History has had far too many cases of immigrants being expedited back to their original countries. Some homeland countries do not have appropriate policies to cater to and protect their citizens in foreign countries. Visa and passport hiccups have been recorded among immigrants, sending them back to their countries for a fault that was not theirs. The change in management may also threaten immigrants when an order by a new president is issued, thus sending them back to their original countries.
This has subsequently been challenging for parents, as they fear for their children in case such ordeals happen.
- Fitting into a new country
Embracing new experiences and environments can be nerve-wracking, especially when doing it alone. The experiences faced by immigrant parents as they try to fit into a new country would be terrifying even to the sturdiest guru. Immigrant parents have faced the challenges of acquiring new jobs, enrolling their children in schools, and finding a neighborhood to raise them. Most have had to do all these without a mentor or acquittance to assist them. Looking back at your success can be emotionally gratifying, but the process can shatter you into a million pieces.
- Struggle to adapt to new cultures and languages
Imagine having to learn Russian or Mandarin as a native American of 35 years. Unfathomable, right? Survival in these new places would feel impossible, but most immigrant parents were accorded with these challenges, and they made it. In the 21st century, this may not strike you as a challenge due to technologies such as Google Translate or Duolingo.
However, immigrant parents encountered language barriers and culture shocks. Nothing may have prepared them on what to expect. Many might have also suffered an identity crisis and were forced to cocoon their original cultures and languages for smooth adaptation.
- Financial pressure
Moving and settling into a new country is financially draining. Factors such as securing a house or buying a car may become challenging due to a weak credit score. Many immigrants have returned to their original countries after facing financial difficulties. Paired with the challenge of securing a job, this matter has frustrated parents and created fear of sustaining their families in foreign countries.
- Discrimination and prejudice
Prejudice against nationality, culture, color, and other differences has posed many difficulties for immigrant parents. As a result, the intention of providing a better future for children can become clouded due to fear of their children experiencing prejudice or racism. For example, immigrants from Syrian or Arabic countries may often be prejudiced as terrorists. The biases may be due to news exacerbated and consumed by people.
Impact of these challenges on the children
The difficulties cited may have the following effects on the children
- Fear of being left alone
Due to the fear of the deportation of immigrant parents, children may live on the edge in fear of this uncertainty. The fear of fending for themselves may cause disorientation in their academic as well as personal lives
- Goal orientation and hard work
Most children with immigrant parents may develop the urge to be hardworking and develop skills in goal orientation. This is after the understanding that a golden spoon is forged on fire and force after sharing their parents’ experiences. The fear of disappointing their parents may also work as a motivation
- Pressure to become successful
Parents are instrumental influencers in the shaping of children’s futures. However, due to the formidable experience encountered by parents, children may gain pressure to ensure their success. This successively leads to anxiety and depression, or even resentment against their immigrant parents, pushing them to greater levels.
- The pressure of being discontinued from schools
Financial constraints on a parent may influence a child’s performance. Fear of being chased out of school due to fee arrears may subsequently degrade the performance in school. Fear of being embarrassed among other students may also create social anxiety.
Examples of college essays about immigrant parents
There are plenty of examples in college essays about immigrant parents. Accessing straightforward samples on the internet can sometimes be sapping. However, writemyessays.com is a companion to students streamlining their educational process and helping them bag that degree.
An example of an essay of immigrant parents is one of an Assyrian student in America. The student explains how petrifying it was to adapt and fit in. The pressure of fitting in was numbing to the point of wanting to look like the American kids and having a ‘normal’ name. Having strict Middle Eastern Parents felt like a step back in her favor, as they would emphasize accommodation and retaining their culture through matters such as dressing. The parents also restricted interactions with other children, hence struggling to relate with her peers.
However, their experiences in navigating life as young immigrants were helpful to the student since her parents enabled her to embrace her identity retrospectively without shedding her personality as they had. Eventually, the child appreciates her parents’ efforts, especially in preserving their culture. She also developed better judgment, was true to herself, and followed her dreams.
Another example of immigrant parents is a student who witnessed his mother rise from tragedy to grace. The immigrant parent had faced many challenges, and being widowed made her accustomed to providing for her four children. She had to work more than 60 hours a week to sustain her family. His mother, unfortunately, fell ill, and the student took it upon himself to fend for his mother. His academics significantly suffered due to his engrossment in employment. The student sustained while trying to attain a balance through these tasks. However, he was able to place his mother on an insurance plan and finish the mortgage on their house.
Having an immigrant parent sprouted the student’s hard work. But, despite the challenges, he also gained sustenance skills and resilience, which eventually put him on the path of being a teacher.
Tips for writing essays on immigrant parents
- Write about yourself truthfully and your life experience with your immigrant parent.
No one can fit into your shoes as well as you would. Only you know where it pinches and where it sags. Student experiences with immigrant parents are unique to them. As you write your story, believe that it is the best. Avoid the notions of what to write and to avoid. Let your thoughts flow through the paper, and share your authentic experience through the voice of words. Mimicking other people’s experiences will create an off-balance and cause you to lose your etch.
- Create a vivid explanation
Everyone has a story to tell. Several other students have compelling experiences to captivate the college admission officers. It is all a matter of how well you tell and describe your report to create higher stakes for your competitor.
You can create a mirage with the right words and allow your audience to experience with you. Paint an arresting image of your experience with an immigrant parent. Describe your journey vividly and showcase how your immigrant parents have influenced aspects of your life through their experience and sacrifice. Vividly showcase how their challenges have been instrumental through your academic life and all steps encountered to allow you to experience life as it is. Remember also to depict how they overcame stumbling blocks along their path.
- Focus on how you solved the problem
A common mistake students make while writing essays on immigrant parents is focusing too much on the challenges encountered. It is appropriate to give reverence to hiccups immigrant parents may have experienced in the quest for greener pastures. However, too much wallowing in the challenges beats the point of the essay.
Therefore, students must avoid pity cards. Instead, highlight the issues and problems you have encountered briefly. Then, to outline the light at the end of the tunnel, explain how your parents rose above their challenges. Describe how their encounters have made you a better individual and how their sacrifices have shaped your life and future.
- Avoid clichés
This advice, as it is, is already a cliché. Nevertheless, this advice is at the tip of every lecturer’s tongue. However, as repetitive and vague as it may be, students must avoid clichés in their articles.
Your story may be the average dust to grace. However, one way to avoid clichés when writing about immigrant parents is to think of it’s your parents’ biography. Since you would want it to be the best and most tremendous moving story the college admission officers have ever read, try as much to avoid clichés. Customize your essay to your experience and be creative about it.
- Make the essay about you, not your parents.
This may sound tricky, primarily because the essay requires you to write about your immigrant parents. However, the report must highlight your experience with them and how their being immigrants have influenced your life
Speak about the challenges you may have encountered and vividly describe how their challenges ulteriorly impacted you. Then, create your rainbow of the experience and highlight how their sacrifice has positively impacted you. It is also vital to include adapted characters gained as a result and how they will be helpful through your life as a student and even in the future.
Shaun Hick quotes that people need to spend more time in the shadows to appreciate standing in the sun. Immigrant parents’ efforts may often go unnoticed by children and society. Schools have awarded a forum for discussing these experiences and chiseling an understanding to the children on the struggles encountered. Through essays on immigrant parents, students can observe life through a magnified lens, thus allowing them to be more appreciative of the life conferred to them by their parents.
With the tips provided, you can now furnish your immigrant parents’ story that will move the audiences to share in your experience and render their hats down in respect.