“Just an international student feeling a little tired and hopeless.

Since the start of my uni life, I no longer take any money from my family. This means that I had to pay for my school fee, hall fee and daily expenses, all by myself. I had to work so many part-time jobs just to be able to afford to study here, 6K/year for school fee, 4K/year for hall fee, not to mention daily meal expenses, transportations, phone bills, and so many other things that I can’t even list all of them down.

On top of that, I still need to work so damn hard to maintain my academic results. Getting a good result is probably the smallest thing that I can do to at least make my family back in my home country proud.

Now that I am almost graduating, I immediately have to start repaying my enormous 40K tuition loan debt which is charged with close to 5% annualised interest rate. Additionally, I still need to find a place to rent outside which is going to cost so much more.

Tbh, sometimes I keep trying to tell myself that I should be proud of myself, to be able to even survive for the past 3 years. Sometimes I blame myself for not working just a little harder in JC, to be able to at least qualify for some kind of scholarship for international students.

Sometimes when I see my friends having all their living expenses and school fee paid by their parents, I wonder how that would feel, life must be easier to be able to just study and not care about any other responsibilities.

Ok I accidentally spent too much time writing this post, time to get back to my lectures and assignments. I still gotta work tomorrow.”