<story><title>When a Chinese PhD Student Meets a German Supervisor [pdf]</title><url>https://kops.uni-konstanz.de/bitstream/handle/123456789/35697/Zhang_0-349300.pdf</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>denzil_correa</author><text>One of my most important suggestions to Asian (Indian and Chinese in particular) students is to expand your horizons both professionally and personally. You are going to a new country - don&amp;#x27;t ONLY mingle around with your kind. There is a far broader experience to gain that will only help you professionally and personally in the future. There are many ways you can do it&lt;p&gt;* Share an apartment with someone from a different country&lt;p&gt;* Make acquaintances and talk to people &lt;i&gt;outside work&lt;/i&gt; with diverse professions - don&amp;#x27;t stick to scientists ONLY&lt;p&gt;* Try to understand difference between cultures&lt;p&gt;Especially once you move to a new country, you have a great opportunity to understand difference between cultures. Don&amp;#x27;t miss it!</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>paradite</author><text>While I agree with your advice, there is one important point that you missed.&lt;p&gt;The fact that Chinese and Indian students tend to form cliques or enclaves, is a perfectly normal and natural behavior, because of the sheer large number of students in the same community.&lt;p&gt;Do not mistake this as &amp;quot;Chinese and Indians are not good at mingling with the locals because of their mindset and culture.&amp;quot; It is mostly just because their social circle is large enough to sustain itself in a typical overseas community. In fact, it requires much more effort for them to get out of the comfort zone than students from countries that do not have so many students studying overseas. Another easy way to see it is that, they literally have a &amp;quot;larger comfort zone&amp;quot; to jump out of.&lt;p&gt;To put it into perspective, consider a US college where there is only a few Chinese or Indian students, chances are they will naturally interact more with locals.&lt;p&gt;Then consider a group of exchange students in an Asia university, chances are they are going to be mingling around within themselves all day with minimal interactions with locals.&lt;p&gt;So my point is, do not judge them negatively because of this, and do put in some extra effort in reaching out to them if you are kind enough and want to change the status quo.</text></comment>
<story><title>When a Chinese PhD Student Meets a German Supervisor [pdf]</title><url>https://kops.uni-konstanz.de/bitstream/handle/123456789/35697/Zhang_0-349300.pdf</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>denzil_correa</author><text>One of my most important suggestions to Asian (Indian and Chinese in particular) students is to expand your horizons both professionally and personally. You are going to a new country - don&amp;#x27;t ONLY mingle around with your kind. There is a far broader experience to gain that will only help you professionally and personally in the future. There are many ways you can do it&lt;p&gt;* Share an apartment with someone from a different country&lt;p&gt;* Make acquaintances and talk to people &lt;i&gt;outside work&lt;/i&gt; with diverse professions - don&amp;#x27;t stick to scientists ONLY&lt;p&gt;* Try to understand difference between cultures&lt;p&gt;Especially once you move to a new country, you have a great opportunity to understand difference between cultures. Don&amp;#x27;t miss it!</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>dorfsmay</author><text>Not just for people from Asia, this applies to anybody going to a different country.&lt;p&gt;I&amp;#x27;d add: stop reading and listening to news in your native language, stop switching devices to your native language, force the immersion experience try to live, eat, read like a local.&lt;p&gt;Not being comfortable is part of learning.</text></comment>