melal's blog

Something I want to say about my project:

According to The China Conundrum published on New York Times, the number of Chinese undergraduates in the United States has tripled in just three years, to 40,000, making Chinese students the largest group of foreign students at American colleges, and the number is still increasing. For most Chinese people, “an overseas student in America” is a “classed” word—the stereotypes for students who are able to study aboard in the US are usually well born, talented and ambitious. As part of this ‘divine’ group, I want to speak for ourselves by using an entertaining way. Therefore I made my project a guidebook for those who have a dream of studying abroad in America, or those who are going to do so, and try to tell them that actually being a Chinese student in America is definitely not easy. Behind the fancy label “overseas student in the US”, is life full of challenges caused by cultural differences and academic pressure.

“You are going to college?”

“Yes.”

“Which one?”

“Oh actually I am going to study abroad in the US.”

Usually, at this moment the person who asks you questions will give you an expression of appreciation, and say: “Wow overseas student in America! You must be really smart and intelligent!”

And you will give him back a confident smile, and reply modestly: “Thanks.”

Same with most people, I feel that academic writing obstructs the free flow of emotion. As student, I often feel stressed and nervous when I read academic essays. I keep telling myself I need to find out its thesis; otherwise it’s an unsuccessful reading experience. One thing that I really don’t like academic writing is that we have to hold a specific point and try to use our language to convince others. Even sometimes I know that the question actually have no correct answer and can be answered in many ways, I still need to write my essay pretending that only my thought is the ‘right’ one. So personally speaking I think academic writing leaves limited space for writes to develop their own explanations for questions and arguments.  

What’s more, academic wring is ‘classed’ because only certain groups of readers have the knowledge that can make them understand the content of an academic paper, others, however, have no access to it. For example, if you have never studied biology, then you may not be able to understand the point that a writer wants to make in a paper on topic of human evolution. Also, I notice that the language used by writers is always ‘standard English free of mistakes’, which is usually spoken by middle-classed white people.

First I really want to say something about my on-campus interview. This is the first time I communicate with people as an interviewer. At first I thought it would be easy, cauz it’s all about ask questions, answer questions and record people’s words. But it turned out that being a great interviewer is really hard. I have to admit that when I designed my questions for my interviewees, I was making assumptions about how they will answer them. Or, in other words, I know what I HOPE them to say in order to gain some useful information to prove my thesis of my essay. But actually when I finished conducting my entire interview, I found that actually almost all my interviewees answered those questions in a way that I didn’t expected them to answer, which means that I had to try change my claim. When I went over my notes trying to come up with a new topic for my essay, I really rethought many questions. I used to believe that I knew answer to these questions, which turned out only my own assumption. For example, one of my questions that I designed for my professor of English workshop is do students from different socioeconomic backgrounds perform differently? I thought her answer would be like “students from higher class families are more confident, whereas students from lower class families are more quiet.” But actually her answer was “there is no distinct difference.” I realized that actually I regarded my own assumptions for many problems as the truth.

One of the most interesting discussions for me during the whole on-campus workshop happened when we are questioned about the first time we thought about ye class issue here in Bryn Mawr College. Two students in our group said that actually before they started our seminar this semester, they have never thought about the social class issues and its correlations with education.  Most students think that when they interact with students who come from different social class, especially with those who come from higher social class than themselves, they are more likely to be self-conscious and sensitive. Therefore, we came up with the idea that people should consider more about the social class issues when they interact with people from different economic backgrounds. But at the same time, when we discussed how often we thought about the class issue during our college life, the answer turned out to be: not very often. We all agreed that we focus more on the “academic elitism” that Jane Trembley mentioned in her article. I think this kind of comparison is really interesting. On the one hand, we think that we should pay more attention to the class issues; on the other hand, we agreed that class sometimes does not matter that much, because what we want is to attain a higher level in academics. I therefore wonder that for people in Bryn Mawr, how important do they think the social class is? Also, what kind of role does it play in education?

The space that I pick up is the nook on the third floor of Denbigh, my residential hall. As a common space for students living on the third floor, nook is a part of my life: I do my readings at nook, I skype with my parents at nook, and, the most important, it was nook at that I started to learn how to “social” with other students, in an American way. The nook is like cultural classroom, what happened there taught me how to fit myself in a different culture. As you can see in the picture, the nook was decorated as a space for people gathering together and having some casual chatting. In order to celebrate Halloween, it was decorated by using pumpkins, skeletons and sparking lights. More important, I regard the nook as a space for me to learn more about American culture through intellectual conversations or just some casual conversations I have with different people. I think it is nook that helps me fit myself into the new cultural environment. 

Everything got better and better, or, it was I that tried to make it better and better. I started to say my opinions out without worrying about whether they are the right answer for teacher and other students; I check the talking notes two days earlier before the class to ensure I won’t miss anything that needed to prepare for the class; I make appointments in the writing center in order to improve my writing… I began to enjoy the seminar. Though I still can’t talk as fluently as I hope, everyone listened patiently whenever I was talking; though sometimes I still don’t understand the idioms used by my American classmates, I dare to ask questions without feeling bad about myself; though sometimes I still feel pretty struggling about writing a great paper without small grammatical errors, I know I am on the way of being a better writer.What is more important, I began to understand the essence of critical thinking. I found that education, a word that occurs in my life so often, is actually not as familiar to me as I thought. Every time I read a new reading assignment, every time I wrote a new paper, I gained a new perspective about education. I started to look back my life, to examine my choices, my school performance and people around me along my road of my education. By this kind of reflection, I not only learned more about education itself, but also learned more about how to critically consider a social issue. 

For me, the upcoming trip will be a great opportunity to gain new understanding about the topics we covered during the class.  What I really want to learn about is the students’ expectations about education. What kind of education do they want to gain? Do they like the way teachers teach? Why do or why don’t? Is “school smart” more valuable or “streetwise”? What their dreams are? Do they believe access to education can lead them to where they want to go?  A lot of questions pooped in my head. But I feel quite unsure about how to start the conversation and make it both enjoyable for me and the high school student.  I want to talk to them, not just ask questions and make it like an interview between a college student researcher and a high school volunteer. I hope I can find a certain point to begin the conversation. But as an international student, I grew up in a totally different background as they did, which makes it harder to have enough common experiences to develop the sentences.  I understand that these differences, on the one hand, may make our conversations more interesting and beneficial for both sides, but on the other hand, I am worried about saying something that offensive or impolite. I don’t know whether I have enough chance to make a deep conversation, but at least I think I will try my best to bring something new to them.

Since I had my Esem, I have been more and more unsure about how to define the word education. But at least I am pretty sure about one thing; that is education is actually v. at the time one starts to go to school and receive education, the education she or he gets is far more than education. We don’t have many “racial issues” in China, but Kai Davis’ experience reminded me the influence of education on students who so not belong to the “mainstream”. For some of them, being a member of minority may motivate them to study harder and become more ambitious; but for some of them, anger and stress accumulate, which may lead to big tragedy.

 For Rodriguez, being minority is a motivator. As a “scholarship boy”, it is difficult for him to find a place both at home and school. But instead of getting frustrated and hopeless, he spent more and more time studying to in order to attain his goal. Though often feel lonely, being isolated by “mainstream” is generally not a very big problem for them. However, for others, being minority is painful and unbearable. A piece of breaking news happened in china in 2004: four dead bodies of were found in their dorms and all of them were killed in a very cruel way. Surprisingly, the killer turned out to be their roommate, a boy from a poor village of Yunnan province. When the murder was caught by the police, he said calmly that he never felt regretted about killing his classmates, for they treated him in a extremely harsh way, just because he came from a poor farmers family.

"Education plays a vital role in father’s life: on the one hand, it leads him to the life he wanted for him and let him leads him to the life he wants; but on the other hand, he completely lost his way to everything in his past life. For many people who intend to change their life by schooling, the access to education is like a one-way ship ticket, once people decide to aboard the ship, there is no chance to get back.

Far more than learning specific knowledge in the classrooms from teachers, I realized that education is actually closely related to class. Class mobility, which is considered as one of the most wonderful things that people can gain from education, is not always equals to happiness. For people who change their life by receiving education, they automatically put themselves in an awkward position, where is extremely hard to find a sense of belonging. Since they move out from their previous class, everything belongs to the class is no longer open to them; but at the same time, everything in the class they end up with is completely brand new.