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For international college students, the failure to achieve their educational goals regarding their program of study creates a large amount of stress. These international students experience pressure to succeed from their families, sponsoring agencies, or even the communities from their home country. For Middle Eastern students who come to study at American universities, this type of stress is very common. Therefore, it was the intent of the researchers to examine this issue so more could be learned regarding this problem. We decided to try to uncover what problems Middle Eastern university students faced in pursuing their education and the coping strategies they used while striving to achieve their educational goals. These problems may include academic, personality, socio-economic, and language problems the students experience and how the students define their situations and the strategies they develop to cope with their problems.
In-depth interviews were conducted with eight Middle Eastern graduate students from the country of Jordan, who were enrolled at a major southwestern university. An interview questionnaire was constructed, consisting of 13 questions (see Appendix A) based on demographic information, the type of problems the students encounter, definition of the situation, and the type of problem-solving strategies used.
During the data collection process, interviewees' responses were recorded, using audiotapes. The interviewees were given the option of responding to the questions either in English or Arabic. Arabic was offered to provide the students with an option to more readily explain their perceptions and deep feelings.
RELATED RESEARCH
Previous studies related to this area of research all reported the stressful nature of being an international student. Perhaps the most famous study concerning international students was conducted by Lysgaard (1955). He developed the U-curve hypothesis, which states that at the beginning of the sojourn, adjustment is felt to be easy. This is followed by a period of depression when adjustment is felt to be stressful, and finally by a period of better adjustment again, thus resulting in a U curve. Subsequent studies either confirmed or questioned Lysgaard's U-curve hypothesis. However, the significance of Lysgaard's study is that it pointed to the stressful nature of being an international student, and all later research (Collins, 1976; Ellis, 1988; Lamboitt, 1979; Barber, Morgan, & Torstrick, 1997) agreed that international students experience...