As my last blog post, I want to go back to business, to clarify a few things and to share some things I learned along the way.
Shall we talk about education? As a human being, every day I live in the world, I receive education not only from school, but also from people I have met or have known, from events small to big, from readings, from traveling, from praying, from tracking back to my old paths, from every experience I’ve overcome. The education I have received makes me who I am today. My education is a part of my life.
The reason I came to the U.S. was certainly not to study academics alone. I view this study abroad experience as an education I am lucky to receive, to not only grow knowledge, but also to grow socially and spiritually. If I was only interested in pursuing knowledge, I could have stayed in China where they advocate the intense spoon-feeding of education. It would have been easier for me to not experience any changes because I was so used to it after 17 years I have lived there. However, both my parents and I think that growing up happily is more essential than being a nerd. Sometimes a better education is not always easy to accept. America educates me in many ways not only academically.
Shall we talk about diversity? I have been asked many times why I chose to come to Whitman. After going to high school in Boston, I chose to leave such a diverse and cosmopolitan city because of many reasons so I always try to give different answers to different people. However, the most sincere answer I give is to myself: I can see lots of opportunities at Whitman. I can see lots of possibilities for myself and my future. There is no question that diversity cultures the numerous opportunities at Whitman. In other word, the diversity Whitman has drove me to come here.
I had a totally different understanding of diversity before I chose Whitman. Living in Boston for over two years I was used to seeing and interacting with people from different cultures. I assumed people with different cultures gathered together are diverse. Until one day I read two student’s blogs from Whitman admissions homepage. One of the blogs was talking about how real diversity should be the interconnection of different minds. The other one was talking about why we should consider going to college in a small town instead of a big city, because geography does not define diversity. The ideas of the two blogs pointed out struck me so hard because they reminded me of what motivated me come to the U.S. in the first place.
I wrote this in my college app, but I am happy to share it with you all: “In my hometown education system, I was instructed to copy notes from the blackboard, memorize the materials in the textbook in order to gain high grades, and not doubt any word my teacher said in class. The world I knew only came from the textbooks and the class. As I grew, I began to ask questions instead of passively accepting the knowledge from books. Unfortunately, my teachers were annoyed by my ‘weird’ and constant questions, they even reproached me ‘Why are you thinking so differently than others?’ I was really upset and wanted to seek a solution.” To pursue the freedom of thought and speech, I came to the U.S.; I came to Whitman.
My experience at Whitman overall has been good. I am happy to learn that lots of Whitties care about diversity. Like the admissions blogs mentioned, diversity should be about variety of minds. It doesn’t mean that the more international students we have the more diverse our school is. International students come from different backgrounds, have our own habits and customs, which determine the ways we may think or act differently than others. We make culture mistakes because we are learning how to fit into American culture. There should not be shame about that and the school should accept that. If international students just act exact the same way as American students, pretend to know American couture and laugh at all the goofy jokes, although they go to the same class and sit together, eat and live together, but not be able to talk about their differences, I don’t see how diversity can blossom. American students may assume all the cultures are the same and international students won’t really accept to American culture.
Take me as an example. I decided to write a blog with aim of bringing my voice as an international student to campus. I blogged about parties I went to and crazy things happened in the parties because I never had have been to any parties like this in China. Likewise, I wrote about sexual jokes because the topic of sex is a brand new thing to me which is rare to talk about it in my home country. Living in a country with little democracy, human rights and freedom of speech for most of my life, I am like a drowning child and I treasure a breath of freedom air to save my life. I am like an innocent baby. Luckily American culture embraced me and every day I am learning something new.
However, the lessons that were most memorable to me were the mistakes and jokes I made because of culture misunderstanding. If sex, drugs, and Rock & Roll represents American pop culture, it can’t be judged as either good or bad because it never has an absolute pure answer. Thus, when I as an international student experienced part of the American culture first-hand (I have to make it clear, the American culture I refer to here is only the parties I go and the silly jokes I made because of culture misunderstanding), I expect to not be judged negatively. Otherwise I can only agree this disagreement.
Overall, it was my pleasure to write blogs for The Pioneer. It was an interesting experience. I am always happy to learn that after reading my blogs, my Vietnamese friend told me that he didn’t know snakes can represent sex in the U.S., and my American friends didn’t know the fact that we as international students don’t know it. Or like one day after my Film Studies class, my professor told me that after reading my blog about how Chinese don’t talk about the topic of sex in class, it reminded him of his teaching experience in China and he learned it in a hard way.
Writing a blog is one of the many ways to let my voice be heard. Although this is no longer the best way for me to express myself, I am going to find many more avenues to keep it up. I am not giving up on encouraging diversity at Whitman. Thank you all for reading my blogs!
