By Tolu Salako

Staff Writer

It is widely assumed the average American teenager is less stressed than the average foreign student, whether it involves academics or extracurricular activities.

Foreign students have the tendency to believe they must work twice as hard as the average American student in order to be successful in the future.

With Coppell High School being one of the most competitive schools in the state, the obsession over grades and sports can have a huge impact on all teenagers. Everyone has heard the saying, “it is cheaper in India” because foreigners have worked hard to master certain skills such as computer software engineering in order to have a substantial career in America.

“My Academic Decathlon class is mostly foreigners and their main priority is their academics, while in my reading class their main priority is their families,” English teacher Lori Yarbrough said.

CHS senior Rachel Beag is a Korean student who moved to America when she was in fourth grade. Beag has been wired to work hard on both academics and extra curricular activities because of her experience at a Korean school.

“In Asia academics are extremely rigorous, and my mom did not want me to learn in that environment,” Beag said. “[My mom] wanted me to have more freedom in my academics and I wanted to take advantage of what they did. [My parents] moved to a foreign country just for me to be my best in my academics and I want to work really hard and not put their sacrifice to waste.”

It is evident at CHS that there is a slight segregation of race, whether it is at lunch tables, study groups and even classrooms. One will often see a group of students from Asian descent studying in the library before school rather than a group of Americans. There is no doubt that there are American students at CHS who work just as hard as the foreigners; however, there is apparently an even larger amount of foreign students who work hard every day.

CHS sophomore Michelle Winkler has an American father and Indian mother.

“I work much harder than Americans especially in my English class when we have vocabulary tests because I study all night for them,” Winkler said. “The test is an easy ‘A’ because it is memory based, but mostly the American kids are sitting there and they take advantage of this easy grade and do not study.”

Many students would stay up for very late hours almost every night just to get the A in order to be in the top five percent or 10 percent to gain a high paying job. Parenting can have a strong influence on teenagers from all ethnicities, and some are inclined to push their children to success.

“My mom really likes me to move forward and pursue my career of being a doctor, and she knows that it starts with high school,” Winkler said. “I am definitely self-motivated more than anything, but my mom always stays up with me on late nights.”

Although there are always opportunities for these students back home, many of them prefer to pursue careers in America.

“[Americans] do not see the opportunities that foreign people have because they do not have relatives around the world like in Pakistan or even China,” sophomore Alisha Punjwani said.

The majority of students from foreign countries in Coppell have one main goal: to pursue their dream career in order to be successful in the future. Thanks to foreign students’ influential parents and self-motivation, the number of hours these students study and their high grades has exceeded the amount of the average American.