As a new international graduate student, I came to American with anxieties and concerns. It is not the first time that I study abroad far from my home town, as I finished my technical bachelor degree in Germany. However, studying a complete different major in English, which is not my first language nor the second, is still a great concern to me whether I could be successful or not. Fortunately, with support from well-designed INTO courses, I am now confident to say that I am ready to be successful in the upcoming challenge. For this reason, in this essay I reflect on some of the skills and knowledge I have learned in INTO Mason Pathway courses, especially in the course “Accelerated Introduction to Graduate Study” by Professor Ferro.

Compared to Germany, which has an old and traditional style of education, the modern Western education of the US stresses their students with a massive number of assignments and presentations every week, students often feel overwhelmed and do not know how to distribute their time to study. Only with good time management skills learned in “Time Management Plan” assignment as well as the useful knowledge provided in Badke (2003), I am now able to control my study plan effectively. I understand that I cannot wait until the last minute to do the assignments, and the assignments should be well-mangaged not locally, but in conujunction with other courses that I have. Furthermore, through the assignment “Plagiarism Reseach Paper” and information from the book of Hjortshoj (2009), now I could apprehend deeply not only the meaning of “plagiarism” but also know how to avoid plagiarism in my future researches. Since GMU is very strict for honor code for almost all courses, it is very important to understand what is considered to be “plagiarism” and what is “paraphase” (Flanagin, 2007).

By way of conclusion, I would like to affirm my position that INTO Mason Pathway courses provide useful and essential information for international students, who usually come from different backgrounds and diverse cultures, in order to prepare for them to be prosperous in their study.